Greater China IP Watch

A systematic analysis of the 11 publicly available trade secret judgments rendered by the SPC IP Tribunal in 2025 — published by Zhao Ye of Jingtian & Gongcheng on April 15 and reviewed by leading China IP commentary — reveals four interconnected trends that together constitute a fundamental shift in how China's highest court approaches trade secret disputes.

1. Sharp damages escalation. Consistent with the punitive damages data discussed in Issue 01, the 11 published cases reveal substantially higher compensation levels than comparable lower-court decisions — a pattern that functions as a downward signal to trial courts to recalibrate their damages awards upward.

2. Systematic reversal of lower-court decisions. The SPC overturned lower-court rulings at a notably high rate in these cases, correcting both findings in favour of defendants who had been incorrectly exonerated and findings against plaintiffs where damages had been underestimated. The direction of reversals is consistently more rights-protective.

3. Expanded burden-shifting. Courts are increasingly applying burden-shifting to defendants once a plaintiff demonstrates (a) the existence and reasonable protection of a trade secret and (b) the defendant's access to it. Defendants must then provide verifiable evidence of independent development — and the evidentiary bar for doing so has been raised.

4. Stronger sanctions for evidence spoliation. Courts imposed adverse inferences and direct sanctions in multiple cases where defendants were found to have destroyed, concealed, or failed to preserve relevant evidence. This development, combined with expanded judicial orders to preserve and disclose evidence, significantly alters pre-litigation risk management for any party holding potentially relevant technical documentation.

The analyst notes that while these decisions function as powerful judicial signals indicating a more rights-protective orientation, they do not yet constitute binding system-wide legal standards — that would require formal designation as guiding cases or further judicial interpretations. However, given that the new Fa Shi [2026] No. 7 punitive damages interpretation is now in force from May 1, these 2025 SPC decisions should be read together with the new framework as the authoritative guide to how the highest court views trade secret litigation.

Although the decision itself was issued on December 31, 2025, detailed analysis and commentary published this week confirm its status as a landmark in pharmaceutical patent protection in China. The Supreme People's Court upheld the Beijing Intellectual Property Court's reversal of a CNIPA invalidation decision, accepting post-filing experimental data to confirm the validity of Novo Nordisk's semaglutide compound patent (CN101133082B) — the core IP protecting Ozempic® and Wegovy®.

The case turned on a fundamental question in pharmaceutical patent law: whether courts would accept experimental data submitted after the original filing date to demonstrate a technical effect (in this case, semaglutide's superior pharmacokinetic profile) that was not supported by data in the original application as filed. CNIPA had originally rejected the patent on exactly this basis. The Beijing IP Court reversed that decision; the SPC affirmed. The key standard applied: post-filing data may be accepted where "the technical effect can be derived from the original specification."

The implications extend well beyond a single pharmaceutical product. China is the world's second-largest pharmaceutical market, and the SPC's willingness to accept carefully structured post-filing data — under its strict conditions — significantly strengthens the prospects for innovative drug patent holders protecting early-stage filings where full experimental support may not yet exist. Novo Nordisk's CEO cited the ruling as demonstrating "firm government support for protecting medical innovation" and as a signal of confidence for foreign companies in China's IP system.