China does the CP – their system is awesome

Establishing a sound legal system for intellectual property rights

The Outline provides a strong legal framework to stimulate innovation and protects intellectual property rights.

Since China joined the WTO in 2001 and gave its commitment for WTO Accession in 2006, it has made comprehensive and systematic improvements to its intellectual property legal system. The core intellectual property legal system has undergone several rounds of significant amendments, especially in recent years, to keep pace with the rapidly changing social development and bring China's intellectual property legal system further in line with international standards, reflecting the Chinese government's determination and effort to strengthen intellectual property protection, including :

“The Trademark Law” was amended for the third time in 2019, including enhancing the obligation to use trademarks and strengthening penalties for bad faith applications for trademark registration and bad faith litigation activities.

“The Patent Law” was amended for the fourth time in 2020, introducing the concept of a pharmaceutical patent linkage system to provide an early resolution mechanism for pharmaceutical patent disputes, adding the compensation for the duration of patents, and improving the design patent protection system.

“The Copyright Law” was amended for the third time in 2020, introducing open-ended provision on the types of works, which left room for new types that might emerge in the future, and adding a "digitization" approach to the "reproduction right".

“The Anti-Unfair Competition Law”, which had not been amended for 20 years since its enactment in 1993, was amended twice in 2017 and 2019. In 2019, the scope of protection of trade secrets was expanded, the reversal of the burden of proof in infringement cases was introduced and the subject of trade secret misappropriation was expanded.

All of the above have been amended to include additional deterrent provisions against infringement, such as punitive damages for intentional infringement, the maximum amount of statutory damages increased to five million RMB (approx. 770,000 USD), and the burden of proof for illegal income related to infringement shifted to infringers, etc.

Supporting regulations, including the implementation regulations of these intellectual property laws, are also seeing gradual improvement, such as “Regulations on the Collective Administration of Copyrights”, “Regulations on the Customs Protection of Intellectual Property Rights”, “Regulations on the Protection of New Varieties of Plants”, “Regulations on the Protection of Layout Designs of Integrated Circuits”, “Regulations on the Protection of Computer Software”. The Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate have also formulated judicial interpretations of the application of the laws in intellectual property cases. Local governments have also enacted local regulations and rules in various intellectual property matters including patent administration. In addition, the penalty for criminal offences relating to intellectual property have been strengthened in amendments to the Criminal Law.

After more than three decades, the fundamental construction of China's intellectual property legal system is nearing its completion. With the implementation of the Outline, we expect a further improvement and refinement of the intellectual property laws and regulations, a legal system that covers a full range of intellectual property categories with a rigorous structure that integrates internally and externally. We believe such system can adapt to social progress and technology development and enable China to actively participate in the formulation of international norms for the protection of intellectual property.