Greater China IP Watch — Issue 10

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Issue 09 (June 1–7): Suzhou court finds Infineon infringed Innoscience's GaN patents; Foreign Trade Law IP reciprocity provisions; CNIPA's Year of Rectification; SPP's new IP Procuratorial Department

Section 01 / Executive Briefing

China's Supreme People's Court delivers final victory to Innoscience in the GaN patent war. On June 12, the SPC rejected Infineon's reconsideration request and upheld the Suzhou Intermediate People's Court's injunction in full — the sales ban on Infineon's infringing GaN products in China is now final and immediately enforceable, closing the China chapter of this dispute tracked since Issue 09.
SPC issues China's first dedicated technical fact-finding guidelines for plant variety cases. Released June 9 alongside three illustrative Typical Cases, the Guidelines respond to a 57.4% year-on-year surge in first-instance plant variety filings and continue the seed industry IP thread first covered with the NP01154 corn case in Issue 05.
CNIPA publishes a public list of 14,460 companies misrepresenting themselves as patent or IP agencies. The disclosure, made June 15 as this issue went to press, is the latest concrete enforcement step in the "Year of Rectification and Standardization" campaign covered in Issue 09 — alongside a separate list of 192 sanctioned "black market" agencies.
The US and German fronts of the GaN dispute remain unresolved even as China's concludes. The US ITC's earlier final determination drew a more nuanced line than initially reported — clearing Innoscience's current products while finding its discontinued legacy products infringed one Infineon patent — and Munich proceedings remain ongoing; readers should expect further developments in upcoming issues.

Mainland China

Hong Kong SAR

Taiwan

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Macau SAR

Legislation & Policy

1 item

Mainland China SPC · Judicial Guidance Plant Variety / Seed IP June 9, 2026

SPC Issues First-Ever Guidelines for Ascertaining Technical Facts in Plant Variety Cases, Alongside Three Illustrative Typical Cases

+57.4%

YoY increase in first-instance plant variety filings nationwide, 2025

4,521

First-instance plant variety cases accepted nationwide, 2019–2025

923

Cases accepted by the SPC IP Tribunal alone over the same period

On June 9, 2026, the Supreme People's Court issued the Guidelines for Ascertaining Technical Facts in Cases Involving New Plant Varieties — the first dedicated instrument in China governing how courts establish technical facts in plant variety rights litigation, promulgated under the Civil Procedure Law, the Seed Law, and the Regulations on the Protection of New Plant Varieties. The Guidelines address three central technical questions that have historically driven inconsistent outcomes in this area: identification of varietal identity (whether an accused product's characteristics match the protected variety), parentage relationships, and essentially derived variety determinations.

The SPC simultaneously released three Typical Cases illustrating application of the new Guidelines, including a "Xiangxue" Gardenia plant variety infringement dispute decided at second instance by the SPC itself, each expressly cross-referenced to specific Guideline provisions. The timing reflects a genuine surge in this litigation category: first-instance plant variety filings rose 57.4% year-on-year in 2025, with filings before the SPC's own IP Tribunal rising 48.3% over the same period — continuing the momentum visible in the NP01154 corn variety case covered in Issue 05, which itself set a record for punitive damages in a plant variety dispute.

Agricultural technology companies, seed breeders, and plant variety rights holders litigating in China should review the new Guidelines closely before their next filing — technical fact-finding has been identified by the SPC itself as the central determinant of case outcomes in this category, and the Guidelines now provide the first consistent national framework for how that determination will be made.

Enforcement & Administration

1 item

Mainland China Patent Agency Reform Year of Rectification June 15, 2026

CNIPA Publicly Lists 14,460 Companies Misrepresenting Themselves as Patent or IP Agencies — A Concrete Step in the "Year of Rectification" Campaign

Continuing the patent agency industry rectification campaign covered in Issue 09, CNIPA released a Public Notice Regarding "Intellectual Property Agency" and "Patent Agency" Enterprises That Have Not Obtained a Patent Agency Practice License on June 15 — the same day this issue went to press. The notice identifies over 14,460 companies whose registered names include the terms "patent agency" or "intellectual property agency" despite none of them holding the requisite practice license. CNIPA separately maintains a list of 192 sanctioned "black market" agencies already penalised for unauthorised patent agency activity.

Per CNIPA's notice, the Intellectual Property Utilization and Promotion Department will update this list monthly based on subsequent license approvals and registrations, and has published a correction contact line for companies that believe they have been listed in error. This represents a meaningfully more transparent and public-facing enforcement mechanism than CNIPA's prior approach of case-by-case license revocations (such as the four firms penalised earlier this year for fabricating applicant data, covered in earlier CNIPA disclosures) — shifting some of the verification burden onto the market itself by making the full list of unlicensed entities searchable.

Companies and individuals engaging a Chinese patent or IP agency for the first time should now cross-check the agency's name against CNIPA's published list before signing an engagement, particularly for smaller or unfamiliar firms. Given the monthly update cadence, this verification should be treated as good practice for every new engagement going forward, not a one-time check.

Courts & Key Decisions

1 item

Mainland China ⭐ Landmark · Final Ruling Semiconductor · GaN June 12, 2026

SPC Upholds Sales Injunction — RMB 10 Million Damages Final and Enforceable

SPC Rejects Infineon's Reconsideration Request, Delivering Final Victory to Innoscience in the China Chapter of the Global GaN Patent War

The Supreme People's Court issued its final review decision on June 12, 2026, rejecting Infineon's reconsideration request and upholding in full the Suzhou Intermediate People's Court's May 27 ruling that Infineon infringed two of Innoscience's core GaN invention patents. Effective immediately, Infineon is barred from selling, offering for sale, or importing the affected GaN products within Mainland China, and the RMB 10 million damages award stands. With the SPC's decision, the dispute has reached a final and enforceable conclusion in China — Innoscience's own statement called it a "decisive and final victory."

May 27, 2026

Suzhou Intermediate People's Court finds Infineon infringed two Innoscience GaN patents; orders sales halt and RMB 10M damages. (Issue 09)

Early May 2026

US ITC issues final determination in Investigation No. 337-TA-1414: Innoscience's current GaN power device products do not infringe Infineon's patents, but Innoscience's discontinued legacy products infringed two claims of Infineon's '481 patent — resulting in a limited exclusion order and cease-and-desist order confined to those legacy products.

June 12, 2026

SPC rejects Infineon's reconsideration, upholding the Suzhou injunction in full. China dispute concluded — final and enforceable.

Ongoing

Munich Regional Court proceedings continue; an August 2024 first-instance ruling already favoured Infineon on a separate patent, with further trial activity expected. Outcome to be confirmed in a future issue.

Two points are worth flagging for practitioners tracking this dispute as a model for parallel multi-jurisdiction semiconductor patent litigation. First, the ITC outcome was more nuanced than headline coverage initially suggested — Innoscience's current, commercially active product line was cleared, with only discontinued legacy products found to infringe, meaning the practical commercial impact of the US exclusion order is narrower than the China sales ban's impact on Infineon. Second, the speed of the SPC's reconsideration review — same-day in some reporting — reinforces the Implementation Plan for Judicial Protection of IP Rights (2026–2030)'s stated objective (see Issue 08) of building a litigation system responsive to the pace of strategic-sector technology disputes, with integrated circuits and high-end equipment named as priority sectors.

Companies operating GaN, power semiconductor, or other strategic-sector product lines across China, the US, and Europe simultaneously should treat this dispute as a case study in how outcomes can diverge sharply by jurisdiction even on closely related patent families — a sales ban in one market and a partial, product-line-specific exclusion in another. Litigation and product strategy should be coordinated globally rather than assuming a result in one jurisdiction predicts the outcome elsewhere.

Industry, Market & Emerging Issues

2 items

Taiwan TIPO · Annual Statistics Semiconductor 2025 statistics, recently published

TIPO's 2025 Statistics Confirm TSMC's Continued Dominance of Taiwan's Invention Patent Filings, Underscoring Semiconductor IP Concentration

TIPO's newly published 2025 statistical rankings show Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) remained the top domestic applicant for invention patents for the tenth consecutive year, against a backdrop of 71,965 total patent applications filed in 2025 (a 1% decrease from 2024), with invention patent applications specifically rising 1% to 51,230. The continued concentration of Taiwan's highest-value patent filings in semiconductor and advanced packaging technology is a useful structural backdrop against which to read this week's conclusion of the Innoscience-Infineon GaN dispute: Taiwan's foundries and packaging houses sit downstream of, and are commercially exposed to, exactly this category of compound semiconductor patent contest, even where the litigating parties are based elsewhere.

Hong Kong SAR Dispute Resolution June 2026

Hong Kong's Neutral-Venue Positioning Gains Further Relevance as the GaN Dispute Illustrates the Value of Coordinated Multi-Jurisdiction Strategy

This week's final conclusion of the China leg of the Innoscience-Infineon dispute — alongside still-unresolved proceedings in the US and Germany — reinforces a theme raised in Issues 08 and 09: companies facing parallel patent disputes across multiple jurisdictions increasingly value a neutral venue for coordinating cross-border strategy, settlement discussions, and licensing negotiations that sit alongside, rather than inside, the formal litigation in each jurisdiction. Hong Kong's continued investment in arbitration and mediation infrastructure positions it as a natural venue for the commercial conversations that often run in parallel with multi-front patent wars of this kind, even where Hong Kong itself is not a venue for any of the underlying patent infringement proceedings.

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Macau SAR

MacauJune 8–14, 2026

No significant IP policy, legislative, or enforcement announcements were issued by Macao's Economic and Technological Development Bureau (DSEDT) during this reporting period. IP registration and enforcement operations continue normally. For Macau-specific IP enquiries, please contact foridom@foridom.com.

📅 Upcoming Dates & Key Deadlines

Ongoing

Munich Regional Court proceedings in the Innoscience-Infineon GaN dispute continue; outcome to be confirmed in a future issue. International

~Jul 2026

US ITC's limited exclusion order against Innoscience's discontinued legacy GaN products expected to take effect following the Presidential review period. International

Monthly

CNIPA's public list of unlicensed companies misrepresenting themselves as patent/IP agencies will be updated monthly. China

H2 2026

Trademark Law (Amendment) — second NPC Standing Committee reading expected. China

2026

CNIPA's national IP plan for the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026–2030) — publication expected later this year. China

Pending

SPC Judicial Interpretation (III) on Patent Infringement Disputes — finalisation expected following closed comment period. China

Publication Greater China IP Watch, Issue No. 10
Reporting period: June 8–14, 2026
Published: Monday, June 15, 2026

Prepared & Proofread by Foridom IP Law Firm (百一知识产权)
Proofread by: Wiky Wang — Attorney at Law, Patent Attorney & Trademark Attorney

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Coverage & Sources Mainland China · Hong Kong SAR · Taiwan · Macau SAR
Primary: CNIPA, SPC, TIPO, IPD, DSEDT