Greater China IP Watch

Alongside the new trade secret regulations, SAMR disclosed its 2025 IP enforcement results and 2026 work plan this week. In 2025, the agency investigated 37,000 IP-related cases and transferred more than 1,000 suspected criminal matters to judicial authorities for prosecution. SAMR is developing new regulations specifically targeting "ghost online stores" — listings designed to evade enforcement through rapid creation, closure, and re-creation cycles — and is strengthening e-commerce platform obligations more broadly. The agency's government-enterprise collaboration mechanism for brand protection has expanded to cover 60 major brands across key industries.

For 2026, SAMR's stated priorities include: fully leveraging the government-enterprise collaboration mechanism to investigate major cross-provincial counterfeiting cases with significant damage and impact; conducting a "look-back" review of 81 e-commerce platforms' implementation of the 2024 Self-Discipline Convention for Improving IP Protection on E-Commerce Platforms; and developing specific implementing measures connected to the broader regulatory framework, including the newly effective trade secret regulations.

With CNIPA having confirmed last week that it is actively drafting its own national IP plan for the 15th Five-Year Plan period (see Issue 07), it is worth revisiting the SPC's own five-year blueprint, the Implementation Plan for Judicial Protection of Intellectual Property Rights by People's Courts (2026–2030), released earlier this spring and now functioning as the judicial half of China's emerging dual-track IP strategy for the period.

The Implementation Plan identifies nine strategic technology sectors targeted for strengthened judicial protection: integrated circuits, industrial machine tools, high-end instruments, basic software, advanced materials, biomanufacturing, high-end equipment, aerospace, and new energy — a list that closely tracks China's broader industrial policy priorities and signals where litigants in these sectors can expect particularly close judicial attention. The Plan also addresses adjudication rules for artificial intelligence matters in some detail, including the legal status of AI-generated content, permissible use of training corpora, and the allocation of liability among AI developers, operators, and end users — issues that Chinese courts have been developing incrementally through individual rulings (including the Guangzhou and Hangzhou Internet Court AI copyright decisions covered in earlier issues) but that now have an explicit five-year policy framework behind them.

Data rights adjudication is treated as a distinct priority area, covering public data, enterprise data, and personal information data — reflecting the same data IP momentum visible in CNIPA's pilot registration programmes (Issue 03) and consistent with the broader push to formalise data as a recognised category of property right in China. The Plan also addresses trade secret protection and non-compete clause enforcement in the context of talent competition between companies, directly relevant to this week's SAMR trade secret enforcement launch.