China’s SPC Releases Typical Intellectual Property Cases of the People’s Courts
Published 24 April 2026
Sarah Xuan
On April 20, 2026, China's Supreme People’s Court released the “Typical Intellectual Property Cases of the People’s Courts in 2025” at a press conference for Intellectual Property Publicity Week. This batch of cases covers multiple fields, including trademark authorization and confirmation, patent infringement determination, criminal protection of trade secrets, regulation of unfair competition, determination of platform liability, protection of data interests, and governance of malicious trademark registrations. On one hand, these cases reflect the strict protection of key core technologies, trade secrets, well-known brands, and copyrighted content; on the other hand, they reflect the judiciary’s prudent grasp of the boundaries of rights, freedom of competition, and social public interests. This article intends to analyze the main points of adjudication, their normative significance, and the new trends in judicial protection of intellectual property reflected therein, based on a summary of the basic content of these cases.
I. Boundaries of Authorization and Standards of Protection in Trademark and Patent Cases (I) Determination of Distinctiveness for Phrase-Type Trademarks In the administrative dispute regarding the application for review of the rejected trademark “The Tragedy of Lord George,” the applicant applied for the registration of “The Tragedy of Lord George” for goods such as perfumes. However, the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) held that the mark was a phrase-based expression that the relevant public would not easily identify as a trademark, and thus rejected the application on the grounds of lack of distinctiveness; the courts of first and second instance both upheld the original conclusion. Upon retrial, the Supreme People’s Court held that the phrase was not a fixed combination in daily life, and its composition, meaning, and manner of pronunciation possessed a certain uniqueness. Furthermore, it was not a promotional slogan or descriptive term for perfume products and had no direct correspondence with the function, use, or characteristics of the goods. Combined with the fact that similar styles of trademarks had already been approved for registration in the industry and evidence of market use in the case, the relevant public was already able to associate the mark with a specific source of perfume products; therefore, it should be recognized as having inherent distinctiveness. The court ultimately revoked the original judgments and the challenged decision, ordering the CNIPA to make a new decision.
The key point of adjudication in this case lies in clarifying that the determination of distinctiveness for phrase-type trademarks should not be confined to their literal form but should return to the functional essence of “identifying the source of goods” under trademark law. In traditional views, longer phrases or expressions with narrative or literary color are often mistaken for “not looking like a trademark,” but modern brand expressions are increasingly rich, and the identification power of a trademark does not necessarily depend on its length or structural simplicity. The Supreme People’s Court emphasized in this case that the uniqueness of the mark itself, the degree of correlation with the designated goods, industry usage habits, and facts of market identification should be comprehensively examined to form a distinctiveness determination standard that is more consistent with market reality.
Regarding its normative significance, this case reflects judicial inclusiveness toward innovative brand expression. Particularly in industries such as perfume, cosmetics, and cultural and creative consumer goods, brand naming is increasingly characterized by storytelling, emotionality, and aesthetics. If distinctiveness is denied solely on the grounds of “phrasalization,” it would neither conform to the laws of the consumer market nor potentially compress the space for brand cultivation by business entities. Of course, this open standard of determination also has boundaries; that is, the distinctiveness threshold must still be strictly maintained for purely advertising slogans, descriptive terms, or expressive resources that should be shared by the public. Therefore, the value of this case does not lie in relaxing the registration conditions for all phrase-type trademarks, but in establishing an examination approach with more substantive judgment.
(II) Determination of Infringement for Chip Invention Patents In an invention patent infringement case involving a chip, the patentee claimed that the accused power management chip fell within the scope of protection of its invention patent. The court of first instance held that the circuit module in the accused technical solution was equivalent to the “pulse signal generation feature” in the claims, and thus ruled for the cessation of infringement and compensation for losses. On second instance, the Supreme People’s Court reversed the judgment, holding that when interpreting patent claims in the electrical field involving logic circuits, the focus should be on the logical connection relationships between technical features, signal flow, and control timing, rather than isolating individual features from the overall technical solution for piecemeal comparison. After a comprehensive analysis combined with the specification, drawings, common knowledge in the field, and the drafting characteristics of the claims, the court determined that the accused technical solution was different from the patent in question in terms of means, functions, and effects, constituting neither identical nor equivalent features, and thus did not fall within the scope of patent protection.
This case highlights the judicial philosophy of balancing “strict protection” with “clear boundaries” in high-tech patent cases. For patentees, the doctrine of equivalents exists to prevent others from circumventing patent protection through minor variations; however, for accused infringers and the order of market competition, if the determination of equivalent infringement is too broad, it will blur patent boundaries and increase institutional uncertainty for innovators. In this case, the Supreme People’s Court did not expand the scope of protection due to the importance of the chip industry but insisted on the perspective of a person skilled in the art, emphasizing a technical understanding of the overall logical structure of the claims.
Through this case, the court further demonstrated that in fields such as semiconductors and circuit design, where technical coupling is high and differences in implementation paths are subtle yet important, infringement determination must adhere to substantial technical comparison and avoid functional, result-oriented, or label-based comparisons. In this way, it can prevent genuine patent infringers from evading responsibility while also preventing patent boundaries from being excessively extended, thereby maintaining the predictability of competition in technological innovation.
II. Severe Crackdown on Traditional Infringement and Improvement of the Civil-Criminal Interface Mechanism (I) Trademark Infringement in the Resale of Refurbished Switches In the case of trademark infringement involving the resale of refurbished switches, the defendants purchased second-hand switch equipment and components at low prices, performed refurbishment through disassembly, cleaning, component replacement, serial number modification, painting, and packaging, then applied commercial marks similar to the rights holder’s registered trademarks and sold them as new equipment. The relevant acts had previously been determined by a criminal judgment to constitute the crime of counterfeiting registered trademarks. Subsequently, the trademark owner filed a civil lawsuit, claiming joint infringement and requesting the application of punitive damages. The court held that the defendants, for the purpose of profit-making, had planned and organized a complete infringement chain with a large scale of infringement and high profits, and acted with obvious malice, constituting a serious trademark infringement. Although some defendants had already executed the fines imposed by the criminal judgment, this did not affect the application of civil punitive damages; it could only be comprehensively considered when determining the multiple of compensation. Ultimately, the court applied three-fold punitive damages, ordering the six defendants to jointly and severally compensate for economic losses of 20 million RMB and pay reasonable expenses of 100,000 RMB.
The important legal issue in this case is whether civil punitive damages can still be applied to the same infringing act that has already been held criminally liable. The court provided a clear answer: although both criminal fines and civil punitive damages have a certain punitive nature, their normative purposes differ. The former focuses on the evaluation of social harm in the sense of criminal law, while the latter serves both as aggravated restitution and civil deterrence; thus, they do not naturally exclude each other. However, in the specific measurement of liability, the court should implement the principle of proportionality between offenses and punishments to avoid manifest imbalance in responsibility.
From the perspective of institutional effects, this case further strengthens the high-pressure deterrence against professionalized, chain-based, and large-scale trademark infringement. Especially in the scenario of selling refurbished equipment as new, the infringing acts not only harm the trademark rights and the reputation of the rights holder but also undermine transaction security and mislead consumers, with social harm significantly higher than general trademark infringement. The court’s application of punitive damages reflects the functional strengthening of the civil liability system for intellectual property in curbing malicious infringement.
(II) Civil-Criminal Interface in Counterfeiting Registered Trademarks In a civil-criminal interface case involving the counterfeiting of registered trademarks, while hearing a civil trademark infringement case, the court discovered clues regarding the source of the infringing goods from materials such as purchase lists submitted by the accused infringer. Determining that the upstream supply behavior was suspected of constituting a criminal offense, the court transferred the case clues to the public security organ. After investigation, it was found that the upstream supplier had long purchased bare batteries and packaging materials printed with counterfeit trademarks, assembled counterfeit batteries themselves for sale, and that the circumstances were particularly serious. The court ultimately sentenced the perpetrator to three years of imprisonment with a three-year reprieve for the crime of counterfeiting registered trademarks, imposed a fine of 200,000 RMB, and ordered the destruction of the infringing products.
Although this case does not involve complex substantive law disputes, it vividly demonstrates the governance value of the civil-criminal interface mechanism in intellectual property. In the past, in cases of manufacturing and selling counterfeit goods, rights holders could often only pursue the liability of terminal sellers or partial infringers in civil litigation, while the source of counterfeiting remained difficult to reach due to broken evidence chains and lack of transparency. This case shows that when handling civil intellectual property cases, the People’s Courts should not be mechanically confined to the scope of the parties’ litigation but should actively identify potential criminal clues based on case materials to push criminal prosecution toward the source segments.
From a more macro perspective, this interface mechanism can transform individual civil rights protection demands into systemic market governance effects, which is of great significance for severing the industrial chain of counterfeit and inferior products and enhancing the effectiveness of intellectual property protection. It also indicates that the function of intellectual property justice has gradually expanded from traditional dispute adjudication to law enforcement coordination and source governance.
(III) Copyright Infringement in the Online Sale of Pirated E-books In the case of copyright infringement involving the online sale of pirated e-books, a publishing company held the right of communication through information networks for the books in question and repeatedly sent lawyer’s letters to an e-commerce platform, clearly stating that the e-books sold by shops within the platform were pirated and attaching specific titles, but the platform failed to take effective measures for a considerable period. The court of second instance held that the platform clearly knew that selling e-books required relevant qualifications and had formulated corresponding rules, yet it failed to set up a business category for e-books, failed to clearly prompt qualification requirements, failed to review qualifications during merchant entry, and failed to perform duties of continuous verification and dynamic monitoring after entry. Furthermore, it failed to take necessary measures after receiving multiple notices from the rights holder, and should therefore bear joint and several liability with the shop operators.
The significance of this case lies in further tightening the duty of care of platform operators in intellectual property protection. According to the traditional “notice-and-takedown” rule, as long as a platform deletes links in a timely manner after receiving notice, it can often claim exemption or reduction of liability. However, as the degree of organizational control by platforms over transaction processes continues to increase, their role is far from being comparable to that of a technically neutral network space provider. Especially for product types like e-books where copyright attributes are highly clear and licensing requirements are distinct, platforms possess a stronger capacity for ex-ante identification and ex-post management.
Therefore, the judicial orientation expressed by this case is: platform responsibility should no longer stop at passive post-event disposal but should extend to ex-ante access review, category rule setting, continuous monitoring, and risk early warning. For digital content transactions, this upgrade in responsibility not only aids copyright protection but also promotes the formation of a more mature compliance governance system by platforms.
III. Protection of Trade Secrets and Regulation of Unfair Competition in the Order of Innovative Competition (I) Internal and External Collusion to Steal Trade Secrets In a criminal case of obtaining trade secrets through internal and external collusion, the technical head of the original company established a competing enterprise after resigning, recruited R&D personnel from the original unit, and collectively decided to develop the same type of chips as the original company. To shorten the R&D cycle and accelerate mass production and financing, the defendants continued to recruit employees who were still employed or had just resigned from the original company and, on the other hand, continuously provided technical information to the newly established company through methods such as browsing, downloading, transcribing, and taking screenshots by internal employees. Before and after the case was uncovered, they organized the deletion of server data, replacement and destruction of hard drives, and signing of “commitment letters” to cover up the illegality of the technical source. The court found all fourteen defendants guilty of infringing trade secrets and accepted the discounted value of reasonable licensing fees for the technical information involved, totaling over 317 million RMB, as the basis for determining the amount of loss.
This case fully reveals the organized, systemic, and high-tech characteristics of current trade secret infringement. Unlike the traditional sense of an individual resigning with materials, the misappropriation model in this case manifested as an integrated operation of “establishing a competing entity—recruiting core personnel—stealing according to the R&D chain division of labor—destroying evidence while developing,” which seriously undermines the normal order of technological innovation. Especially in fields with high investment and long R&D cycles like chips, the competitive advantage carried by trade secrets is crucial; once seized as a whole by a competitor through illegal means, it not only makes it difficult for the rights holder to recover initial R&D investment but may also substantially distort the competition landscape of the relevant industry.
Another noteworthy highlight of the adjudication in this case is the adoption of the discounted value of reasonable licensing fees for determining the amount of loss. In high-tech trade secret cases, it is often difficult to accurately prove direct sales losses or profit losses, while the market value of the secret information itself, its effect on shortening R&D progress, and its promotion of financing capacity may be enormous. The court’s adoption of the discounted value of reasonable licensing fees as the basis for loss determination enhances the operability of criminal protection for trade secrets and indicates that intellectual property damage determination methods are constantly adapting to the realistic needs of technical cases.
(II) Unfair Competition through Malicious “Poaching” In the malicious “poaching” case, both parties were competitors in the same industry and had previously had a trade secret dispute caused by the hiring of each other’s employees, reaching a settlement agreement wherein both parties agreed not to directly or indirectly hire each other’s current employees, employees who had been resigned for less than half a year, or employees with non-compete obligations. However, the defendant company subsequently continued to recruit more than twenty resigned employees, including department heads and technical executives from the plaintiff company, and helped employees circumvent non-compete obligations through methods such as third-party contract signing, salary payment, social security contributions, promises of high salaries, and payment of breach-of-contract compensation on their behalf. The court of second instance accordingly determined that the defendant’s behavior constituted malicious “poaching” implemented while knowing or being reasonably expected to know that the relevant employees were subject to non-compete obligations, thus constituting unfair competition.
This case addresses a frontier challenge in current competition law practice: how to balance freedom of talent flow with the order of enterprise competition. In principle, employees’ freedom of career choice and enterprises’ freedom of recruitment are both protected by law, and a market economy cannot maintain competition order through rigid personnel control. But on the other hand, if a competitor knows that a worker is subject to non-compete obligations yet helps them circumvent legal and contractual constraints through institutional and concealed arrangements, and centrally absorbs the other party’s key personnel in the short term to weaken its core competitiveness, then such behavior is no longer talent flow in the general sense but possesses clear attributes of unfair competition.
This case clearly defined the boundary between normal “talent recruitment” and malicious “poaching.” The court did not deny the legitimacy of reasonable talent flow but made a negative evaluation of behavior that gains short-term development advantages at the cost of harming the competitor’s legitimate rights and interests and circumventing non-compete obligations. This is particularly important for technology-intensive industries, as the order of talent competition in such industries is often highly correlated with trade secret protection, R&D stability, and the maintenance of the innovation ecology.
IV. Data Governance, Platform Governance, and Network Competition Order in the Context of the Digital Economy (I) Unfair Competition in Scraping Network Platform Data In the case of unfair competition regarding the scraping of network platform data, two e-commerce platforms claimed that they enjoyed operational interests in the product data on the platforms based on merchant authorization and clearly prohibited unauthorized data scraping through legal statements, Robots protocols, and risk control mechanisms. The defendant obtained user cookies through a price-comparison plugin and combined them with other technical means to break through various anti-scraping measures of the platforms, bulk-acquiring product data, and then providing paid data products and services such as price monitoring, market analysis, and customized APIs on its own website and platform. The court held that the defendant, in terms of acquisition means, bypassed normal access permissions and the platform’s risk control mechanisms, hindered the normal operation of the platform, and infringed on the privacy of some consumers. Regarding data usage, the data services it formed suffered from low quality and encouraged unreasonable price control, harming consumer interests and the order of market competition; therefore, both its acquisition and usage behaviors constituted unfair competition.
An important institutional significance of this case is the clarification that commercial data competition cases should not simply apply the logic that “public data can be freely utilized.” The court adopted a more detailed layered protection logic, distinguishing between public data, conditionally public data, and non-public data, and comprehensively evaluating them in combination with the scope of authorization, acquisition means, usage scenarios, and social impact. This approach helps achieve a more refined balance between the utilization of data circulation and the protection of platform business interests.
Furthermore, this case indicates that in data competition cases, courts have begun to shift from “whether the data is visible” to a comprehensive review framework of “whether the acquisition is legitimate, the utilization is reasonable, and the consequences are acceptable.” Platform data usually crystallizes the platform’s continuous investment in technology, organization, and rules, and cannot naturally lose legal protection because some of it is externally visible; however, the platform’s control over data is not absolutely exclusive, and reasonable data utilization remains an important foundation for innovation in the digital economy. Therefore, the real key lies in establishing clear boundary rules. This case provides a demonstrative adjudication model for this.
(II) Commercial Disparagement Case involving “Internet Black Mouths” In the commercial disparagement case involving “Internet black mouths,” the perpetrator used social media accounts to continuously publish false and misleading video content regarding an enterprise’s profit model, product quality, business reputation, and the personal reputation of the enterprise’s legal representative, attracting traffic and conducting live-stream sales through malicious smearing, and creating a market competitive advantage for its affiliated enterprise. The court determined that the behavior constituted both commercial disparagement against the enterprise and infringement of the reputation rights of the enterprise’s founder. The person under whose real name the account was registered failed to fulfill supervisory duties, and the affiliated enterprise maintained a laissez-faire attitude toward the infringing information and enjoyed the traffic dividends, constituting joint infringement. Accordingly, the court ordered the cessation of infringement, deletion of videos, public apology, and compensation for losses.
This case has strong practical relevance for the network competition order in the current short-video era. Different from traditional commercial disparagement which mainly occurs in scenarios of promotional comparison or direct belittlement between operators, commercial disparagement in the traffic economy often amplifies influence rapidly through emotional expressions and algorithmic transmission, requiring a more meticulous distinction in practice between legitimate public opinion supervision, consumer evaluation, and malicious infringing acts aimed at profiting from traffic.
In addition, the court in this case actually drew an important boundary: if the perpetrator fabricates and spreads false and misleading information for the purpose of harming a competitor’s commercial reputation, attracting fans, and seeking commercial benefits, it does not belong to normal speech or supervision protected by law and should bear corresponding civil liability. It is particularly noteworthy that the court did not limit liability to the direct publisher but included the account lender and the traffic-beneficiary enterprise within the joint infringement framework, reflecting a penetrative punishment of the complete interest chain of “content-account-commercial monetization.” This approach is of great significance for governing the frequently occurring phenomena of “black PR” and “black-mouth marketing.”
V. Countering the Abuse of the Intellectual Property System In the case of unfair competition involving repeated malicious trademark registration, the defendant, as a competitor in the same industry, continuously applied for the registration of multiple trademarks similar to the plaintiff’s “Blue Girl” series trademarks over many years and licensed two of them to others for use. Previously, relevant administrative rulings and prior judgments had repeatedly determined that its registration behavior possessed the clear intent to copy and piggyback on the famous trademarks of others, belonging to “obtaining registration by other illegitimate means.” On this basis, the court further determined that the defendant’s continuous and repeated applications for similar trademarks obviously exceeded normal business needs and had the purpose of piggybacking on others’ goodwill and seeking illegitimate interests, constituting unfair competition. The agency company, as a professional trademark agency, continued to provide agency services while clearly knowing that the client was registering in bad faith, constituting contributory infringement and should bear corresponding joint and several liability.
The reason this case is important is that it breaks through the traditional path of relying solely on trademark authorization and confirmation procedures to deal with malicious registration. In the past, dealing with behaviors such as preemptive registration, hoarding, and copying of others’ trademarks relied mostly on procedures like oppositions, invalidations, and rejection reviews on a case-by-case basis; however, this method often has high costs, long cycles, and limited governance effects when facing batch, continuous, and iterative malicious registrations. By making a holistic negative evaluation using the Anti-Unfair Competition Law, the court in this case substantially elevated “malicious registration behavior” from a simple trademark examination issue to a “market competition order issue.”
From the perspective of institutional function, this adjudication approach helps strike at behavior that instrumentalizes and speculates on the intellectual property system. Even more noteworthy is that the court did not stop at pursuing the applicant’s liability but included professional agencies in the chain of responsibility, requiring them to bear a higher duty of care toward application behaviors that are obviously abnormal and have been repeatedly evaluated negatively. This has a clear demonstrative significance for rectifying the trademark agency industry and purifying the intellectual property service market.
Overall Review Comprehensive observation of the ten typical cases mentioned above allows for the summary of several distinct trends in the current judicial protection of intellectual property by the People’s Courts.
First, the focus of intellectual property justice is shifting from the remedy of a single right to the overall maintenance of the innovation ecology and market order. Whether it is the theft of trade secrets, malicious “poaching,” data scraping, or online commercial disparagement, the essence is not merely the infringement of a specific right, but rather an impact on the technological innovation order, talent competition order, platform governance order, and market trust mechanism. The People’s Courts are increasingly emphasizing the market impact and institutional spillover effects of such cases.
Second, the intensity of judicial protection continues to increase, but it is not an unconstrained expansion of rights; rather, it emphasizes “strict protection” and “clear boundaries” simultaneously. In the phrase-type trademark case, the court did not mechanically deny distinctiveness due to the special form of the mark; in the chip patent case, the court also did not easily expand the scope of patent protection due to the high value of technological innovation. This shows that the core of current intellectual property justice is not simply “favoring the rights holder,” but achieving more predictable protection based on rigorous reasoning.
Third, the coordinated use of diverse liability tools is becoming increasingly mature. Institutional tools such as punitive damages, the civil-criminal interface, platform joint and several liability, contributory infringement liability, and joint infringement determination have been flexibly applied in different cases, reflecting that intellectual property justice is forming a more multi-dimensional and precise liability system. This method of liability allocation allows different types of infringing acts to receive differentiated responses, thereby more effectively enhancing protection effectiveness.
Fourth, the rule of law in the digital economy has become a new growth point for intellectual property justice. Factors such as data interests, platform responsibility, algorithmic transmission, and traffic monetization frequently enter the core of adjudication, meaning that traditional intellectual property jurisprudence is constantly undergoing deep integration with the Anti-Unfair Competition Law, general provisions of the Civil Code, and network governance rules. Innovation in judicial protection of intellectual property in the future will, to a large extent, be reflected in the shaping of rules in these cross-cutting fields.
Of course, it should also be noted that the problems revealed by these cases have not been completely resolved by individual judgments. For example, the standards for layered protection of data interests still need to be further refined, and the intensity and scope of platform governance obligations also need to be constantly honed in practice; the boundary between malicious “poaching” and normal talent competition still requires more typological adjudication for clarification. The significance of typical cases lies not only in “giving answers” but also in “raising questions” and pointing the direction for the future evolution of rules.
I. Boundaries of Authorization and Standards of Protection in Trademark and Patent Cases (I) Determination of Distinctiveness for Phrase-Type Trademarks In the administrative dispute regarding the application for review of the rejected trademark “The Tragedy of Lord George,” the applicant applied for the registration of “The Tragedy of Lord George” for goods such as perfumes. However, the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) held that the mark was a phrase-based expression that the relevant public would not easily identify as a trademark, and thus rejected the application on the grounds of lack of distinctiveness; the courts of first and second instance both upheld the original conclusion. Upon retrial, the Supreme People’s Court held that the phrase was not a fixed combination in daily life, and its composition, meaning, and manner of pronunciation possessed a certain uniqueness. Furthermore, it was not a promotional slogan or descriptive term for perfume products and had no direct correspondence with the function, use, or characteristics of the goods. Combined with the fact that similar styles of trademarks had already been approved for registration in the industry and evidence of market use in the case, the relevant public was already able to associate the mark with a specific source of perfume products; therefore, it should be recognized as having inherent distinctiveness. The court ultimately revoked the original judgments and the challenged decision, ordering the CNIPA to make a new decision.
The key point of adjudication in this case lies in clarifying that the determination of distinctiveness for phrase-type trademarks should not be confined to their literal form but should return to the functional essence of “identifying the source of goods” under trademark law. In traditional views, longer phrases or expressions with narrative or literary color are often mistaken for “not looking like a trademark,” but modern brand expressions are increasingly rich, and the identification power of a trademark does not necessarily depend on its length or structural simplicity. The Supreme People’s Court emphasized in this case that the uniqueness of the mark itself, the degree of correlation with the designated goods, industry usage habits, and facts of market identification should be comprehensively examined to form a distinctiveness determination standard that is more consistent with market reality.
Regarding its normative significance, this case reflects judicial inclusiveness toward innovative brand expression. Particularly in industries such as perfume, cosmetics, and cultural and creative consumer goods, brand naming is increasingly characterized by storytelling, emotionality, and aesthetics. If distinctiveness is denied solely on the grounds of “phrasalization,” it would neither conform to the laws of the consumer market nor potentially compress the space for brand cultivation by business entities. Of course, this open standard of determination also has boundaries; that is, the distinctiveness threshold must still be strictly maintained for purely advertising slogans, descriptive terms, or expressive resources that should be shared by the public. Therefore, the value of this case does not lie in relaxing the registration conditions for all phrase-type trademarks, but in establishing an examination approach with more substantive judgment.
(II) Determination of Infringement for Chip Invention Patents In an invention patent infringement case involving a chip, the patentee claimed that the accused power management chip fell within the scope of protection of its invention patent. The court of first instance held that the circuit module in the accused technical solution was equivalent to the “pulse signal generation feature” in the claims, and thus ruled for the cessation of infringement and compensation for losses. On second instance, the Supreme People’s Court reversed the judgment, holding that when interpreting patent claims in the electrical field involving logic circuits, the focus should be on the logical connection relationships between technical features, signal flow, and control timing, rather than isolating individual features from the overall technical solution for piecemeal comparison. After a comprehensive analysis combined with the specification, drawings, common knowledge in the field, and the drafting characteristics of the claims, the court determined that the accused technical solution was different from the patent in question in terms of means, functions, and effects, constituting neither identical nor equivalent features, and thus did not fall within the scope of patent protection.
This case highlights the judicial philosophy of balancing “strict protection” with “clear boundaries” in high-tech patent cases. For patentees, the doctrine of equivalents exists to prevent others from circumventing patent protection through minor variations; however, for accused infringers and the order of market competition, if the determination of equivalent infringement is too broad, it will blur patent boundaries and increase institutional uncertainty for innovators. In this case, the Supreme People’s Court did not expand the scope of protection due to the importance of the chip industry but insisted on the perspective of a person skilled in the art, emphasizing a technical understanding of the overall logical structure of the claims.
Through this case, the court further demonstrated that in fields such as semiconductors and circuit design, where technical coupling is high and differences in implementation paths are subtle yet important, infringement determination must adhere to substantial technical comparison and avoid functional, result-oriented, or label-based comparisons. In this way, it can prevent genuine patent infringers from evading responsibility while also preventing patent boundaries from being excessively extended, thereby maintaining the predictability of competition in technological innovation.
II. Severe Crackdown on Traditional Infringement and Improvement of the Civil-Criminal Interface Mechanism (I) Trademark Infringement in the Resale of Refurbished Switches In the case of trademark infringement involving the resale of refurbished switches, the defendants purchased second-hand switch equipment and components at low prices, performed refurbishment through disassembly, cleaning, component replacement, serial number modification, painting, and packaging, then applied commercial marks similar to the rights holder’s registered trademarks and sold them as new equipment. The relevant acts had previously been determined by a criminal judgment to constitute the crime of counterfeiting registered trademarks. Subsequently, the trademark owner filed a civil lawsuit, claiming joint infringement and requesting the application of punitive damages. The court held that the defendants, for the purpose of profit-making, had planned and organized a complete infringement chain with a large scale of infringement and high profits, and acted with obvious malice, constituting a serious trademark infringement. Although some defendants had already executed the fines imposed by the criminal judgment, this did not affect the application of civil punitive damages; it could only be comprehensively considered when determining the multiple of compensation. Ultimately, the court applied three-fold punitive damages, ordering the six defendants to jointly and severally compensate for economic losses of 20 million RMB and pay reasonable expenses of 100,000 RMB.
The important legal issue in this case is whether civil punitive damages can still be applied to the same infringing act that has already been held criminally liable. The court provided a clear answer: although both criminal fines and civil punitive damages have a certain punitive nature, their normative purposes differ. The former focuses on the evaluation of social harm in the sense of criminal law, while the latter serves both as aggravated restitution and civil deterrence; thus, they do not naturally exclude each other. However, in the specific measurement of liability, the court should implement the principle of proportionality between offenses and punishments to avoid manifest imbalance in responsibility.
From the perspective of institutional effects, this case further strengthens the high-pressure deterrence against professionalized, chain-based, and large-scale trademark infringement. Especially in the scenario of selling refurbished equipment as new, the infringing acts not only harm the trademark rights and the reputation of the rights holder but also undermine transaction security and mislead consumers, with social harm significantly higher than general trademark infringement. The court’s application of punitive damages reflects the functional strengthening of the civil liability system for intellectual property in curbing malicious infringement.
(II) Civil-Criminal Interface in Counterfeiting Registered Trademarks In a civil-criminal interface case involving the counterfeiting of registered trademarks, while hearing a civil trademark infringement case, the court discovered clues regarding the source of the infringing goods from materials such as purchase lists submitted by the accused infringer. Determining that the upstream supply behavior was suspected of constituting a criminal offense, the court transferred the case clues to the public security organ. After investigation, it was found that the upstream supplier had long purchased bare batteries and packaging materials printed with counterfeit trademarks, assembled counterfeit batteries themselves for sale, and that the circumstances were particularly serious. The court ultimately sentenced the perpetrator to three years of imprisonment with a three-year reprieve for the crime of counterfeiting registered trademarks, imposed a fine of 200,000 RMB, and ordered the destruction of the infringing products.
Although this case does not involve complex substantive law disputes, it vividly demonstrates the governance value of the civil-criminal interface mechanism in intellectual property. In the past, in cases of manufacturing and selling counterfeit goods, rights holders could often only pursue the liability of terminal sellers or partial infringers in civil litigation, while the source of counterfeiting remained difficult to reach due to broken evidence chains and lack of transparency. This case shows that when handling civil intellectual property cases, the People’s Courts should not be mechanically confined to the scope of the parties’ litigation but should actively identify potential criminal clues based on case materials to push criminal prosecution toward the source segments.
From a more macro perspective, this interface mechanism can transform individual civil rights protection demands into systemic market governance effects, which is of great significance for severing the industrial chain of counterfeit and inferior products and enhancing the effectiveness of intellectual property protection. It also indicates that the function of intellectual property justice has gradually expanded from traditional dispute adjudication to law enforcement coordination and source governance.
(III) Copyright Infringement in the Online Sale of Pirated E-books In the case of copyright infringement involving the online sale of pirated e-books, a publishing company held the right of communication through information networks for the books in question and repeatedly sent lawyer’s letters to an e-commerce platform, clearly stating that the e-books sold by shops within the platform were pirated and attaching specific titles, but the platform failed to take effective measures for a considerable period. The court of second instance held that the platform clearly knew that selling e-books required relevant qualifications and had formulated corresponding rules, yet it failed to set up a business category for e-books, failed to clearly prompt qualification requirements, failed to review qualifications during merchant entry, and failed to perform duties of continuous verification and dynamic monitoring after entry. Furthermore, it failed to take necessary measures after receiving multiple notices from the rights holder, and should therefore bear joint and several liability with the shop operators.
The significance of this case lies in further tightening the duty of care of platform operators in intellectual property protection. According to the traditional “notice-and-takedown” rule, as long as a platform deletes links in a timely manner after receiving notice, it can often claim exemption or reduction of liability. However, as the degree of organizational control by platforms over transaction processes continues to increase, their role is far from being comparable to that of a technically neutral network space provider. Especially for product types like e-books where copyright attributes are highly clear and licensing requirements are distinct, platforms possess a stronger capacity for ex-ante identification and ex-post management.
Therefore, the judicial orientation expressed by this case is: platform responsibility should no longer stop at passive post-event disposal but should extend to ex-ante access review, category rule setting, continuous monitoring, and risk early warning. For digital content transactions, this upgrade in responsibility not only aids copyright protection but also promotes the formation of a more mature compliance governance system by platforms.
III. Protection of Trade Secrets and Regulation of Unfair Competition in the Order of Innovative Competition (I) Internal and External Collusion to Steal Trade Secrets In a criminal case of obtaining trade secrets through internal and external collusion, the technical head of the original company established a competing enterprise after resigning, recruited R&D personnel from the original unit, and collectively decided to develop the same type of chips as the original company. To shorten the R&D cycle and accelerate mass production and financing, the defendants continued to recruit employees who were still employed or had just resigned from the original company and, on the other hand, continuously provided technical information to the newly established company through methods such as browsing, downloading, transcribing, and taking screenshots by internal employees. Before and after the case was uncovered, they organized the deletion of server data, replacement and destruction of hard drives, and signing of “commitment letters” to cover up the illegality of the technical source. The court found all fourteen defendants guilty of infringing trade secrets and accepted the discounted value of reasonable licensing fees for the technical information involved, totaling over 317 million RMB, as the basis for determining the amount of loss.
This case fully reveals the organized, systemic, and high-tech characteristics of current trade secret infringement. Unlike the traditional sense of an individual resigning with materials, the misappropriation model in this case manifested as an integrated operation of “establishing a competing entity—recruiting core personnel—stealing according to the R&D chain division of labor—destroying evidence while developing,” which seriously undermines the normal order of technological innovation. Especially in fields with high investment and long R&D cycles like chips, the competitive advantage carried by trade secrets is crucial; once seized as a whole by a competitor through illegal means, it not only makes it difficult for the rights holder to recover initial R&D investment but may also substantially distort the competition landscape of the relevant industry.
Another noteworthy highlight of the adjudication in this case is the adoption of the discounted value of reasonable licensing fees for determining the amount of loss. In high-tech trade secret cases, it is often difficult to accurately prove direct sales losses or profit losses, while the market value of the secret information itself, its effect on shortening R&D progress, and its promotion of financing capacity may be enormous. The court’s adoption of the discounted value of reasonable licensing fees as the basis for loss determination enhances the operability of criminal protection for trade secrets and indicates that intellectual property damage determination methods are constantly adapting to the realistic needs of technical cases.
(II) Unfair Competition through Malicious “Poaching” In the malicious “poaching” case, both parties were competitors in the same industry and had previously had a trade secret dispute caused by the hiring of each other’s employees, reaching a settlement agreement wherein both parties agreed not to directly or indirectly hire each other’s current employees, employees who had been resigned for less than half a year, or employees with non-compete obligations. However, the defendant company subsequently continued to recruit more than twenty resigned employees, including department heads and technical executives from the plaintiff company, and helped employees circumvent non-compete obligations through methods such as third-party contract signing, salary payment, social security contributions, promises of high salaries, and payment of breach-of-contract compensation on their behalf. The court of second instance accordingly determined that the defendant’s behavior constituted malicious “poaching” implemented while knowing or being reasonably expected to know that the relevant employees were subject to non-compete obligations, thus constituting unfair competition.
This case addresses a frontier challenge in current competition law practice: how to balance freedom of talent flow with the order of enterprise competition. In principle, employees’ freedom of career choice and enterprises’ freedom of recruitment are both protected by law, and a market economy cannot maintain competition order through rigid personnel control. But on the other hand, if a competitor knows that a worker is subject to non-compete obligations yet helps them circumvent legal and contractual constraints through institutional and concealed arrangements, and centrally absorbs the other party’s key personnel in the short term to weaken its core competitiveness, then such behavior is no longer talent flow in the general sense but possesses clear attributes of unfair competition.
This case clearly defined the boundary between normal “talent recruitment” and malicious “poaching.” The court did not deny the legitimacy of reasonable talent flow but made a negative evaluation of behavior that gains short-term development advantages at the cost of harming the competitor’s legitimate rights and interests and circumventing non-compete obligations. This is particularly important for technology-intensive industries, as the order of talent competition in such industries is often highly correlated with trade secret protection, R&D stability, and the maintenance of the innovation ecology.
IV. Data Governance, Platform Governance, and Network Competition Order in the Context of the Digital Economy (I) Unfair Competition in Scraping Network Platform Data In the case of unfair competition regarding the scraping of network platform data, two e-commerce platforms claimed that they enjoyed operational interests in the product data on the platforms based on merchant authorization and clearly prohibited unauthorized data scraping through legal statements, Robots protocols, and risk control mechanisms. The defendant obtained user cookies through a price-comparison plugin and combined them with other technical means to break through various anti-scraping measures of the platforms, bulk-acquiring product data, and then providing paid data products and services such as price monitoring, market analysis, and customized APIs on its own website and platform. The court held that the defendant, in terms of acquisition means, bypassed normal access permissions and the platform’s risk control mechanisms, hindered the normal operation of the platform, and infringed on the privacy of some consumers. Regarding data usage, the data services it formed suffered from low quality and encouraged unreasonable price control, harming consumer interests and the order of market competition; therefore, both its acquisition and usage behaviors constituted unfair competition.
An important institutional significance of this case is the clarification that commercial data competition cases should not simply apply the logic that “public data can be freely utilized.” The court adopted a more detailed layered protection logic, distinguishing between public data, conditionally public data, and non-public data, and comprehensively evaluating them in combination with the scope of authorization, acquisition means, usage scenarios, and social impact. This approach helps achieve a more refined balance between the utilization of data circulation and the protection of platform business interests.
Furthermore, this case indicates that in data competition cases, courts have begun to shift from “whether the data is visible” to a comprehensive review framework of “whether the acquisition is legitimate, the utilization is reasonable, and the consequences are acceptable.” Platform data usually crystallizes the platform’s continuous investment in technology, organization, and rules, and cannot naturally lose legal protection because some of it is externally visible; however, the platform’s control over data is not absolutely exclusive, and reasonable data utilization remains an important foundation for innovation in the digital economy. Therefore, the real key lies in establishing clear boundary rules. This case provides a demonstrative adjudication model for this.
(II) Commercial Disparagement Case involving “Internet Black Mouths” In the commercial disparagement case involving “Internet black mouths,” the perpetrator used social media accounts to continuously publish false and misleading video content regarding an enterprise’s profit model, product quality, business reputation, and the personal reputation of the enterprise’s legal representative, attracting traffic and conducting live-stream sales through malicious smearing, and creating a market competitive advantage for its affiliated enterprise. The court determined that the behavior constituted both commercial disparagement against the enterprise and infringement of the reputation rights of the enterprise’s founder. The person under whose real name the account was registered failed to fulfill supervisory duties, and the affiliated enterprise maintained a laissez-faire attitude toward the infringing information and enjoyed the traffic dividends, constituting joint infringement. Accordingly, the court ordered the cessation of infringement, deletion of videos, public apology, and compensation for losses.
This case has strong practical relevance for the network competition order in the current short-video era. Different from traditional commercial disparagement which mainly occurs in scenarios of promotional comparison or direct belittlement between operators, commercial disparagement in the traffic economy often amplifies influence rapidly through emotional expressions and algorithmic transmission, requiring a more meticulous distinction in practice between legitimate public opinion supervision, consumer evaluation, and malicious infringing acts aimed at profiting from traffic.
In addition, the court in this case actually drew an important boundary: if the perpetrator fabricates and spreads false and misleading information for the purpose of harming a competitor’s commercial reputation, attracting fans, and seeking commercial benefits, it does not belong to normal speech or supervision protected by law and should bear corresponding civil liability. It is particularly noteworthy that the court did not limit liability to the direct publisher but included the account lender and the traffic-beneficiary enterprise within the joint infringement framework, reflecting a penetrative punishment of the complete interest chain of “content-account-commercial monetization.” This approach is of great significance for governing the frequently occurring phenomena of “black PR” and “black-mouth marketing.”
V. Countering the Abuse of the Intellectual Property System In the case of unfair competition involving repeated malicious trademark registration, the defendant, as a competitor in the same industry, continuously applied for the registration of multiple trademarks similar to the plaintiff’s “Blue Girl” series trademarks over many years and licensed two of them to others for use. Previously, relevant administrative rulings and prior judgments had repeatedly determined that its registration behavior possessed the clear intent to copy and piggyback on the famous trademarks of others, belonging to “obtaining registration by other illegitimate means.” On this basis, the court further determined that the defendant’s continuous and repeated applications for similar trademarks obviously exceeded normal business needs and had the purpose of piggybacking on others’ goodwill and seeking illegitimate interests, constituting unfair competition. The agency company, as a professional trademark agency, continued to provide agency services while clearly knowing that the client was registering in bad faith, constituting contributory infringement and should bear corresponding joint and several liability.
The reason this case is important is that it breaks through the traditional path of relying solely on trademark authorization and confirmation procedures to deal with malicious registration. In the past, dealing with behaviors such as preemptive registration, hoarding, and copying of others’ trademarks relied mostly on procedures like oppositions, invalidations, and rejection reviews on a case-by-case basis; however, this method often has high costs, long cycles, and limited governance effects when facing batch, continuous, and iterative malicious registrations. By making a holistic negative evaluation using the Anti-Unfair Competition Law, the court in this case substantially elevated “malicious registration behavior” from a simple trademark examination issue to a “market competition order issue.”
From the perspective of institutional function, this adjudication approach helps strike at behavior that instrumentalizes and speculates on the intellectual property system. Even more noteworthy is that the court did not stop at pursuing the applicant’s liability but included professional agencies in the chain of responsibility, requiring them to bear a higher duty of care toward application behaviors that are obviously abnormal and have been repeatedly evaluated negatively. This has a clear demonstrative significance for rectifying the trademark agency industry and purifying the intellectual property service market.
Overall Review Comprehensive observation of the ten typical cases mentioned above allows for the summary of several distinct trends in the current judicial protection of intellectual property by the People’s Courts.
First, the focus of intellectual property justice is shifting from the remedy of a single right to the overall maintenance of the innovation ecology and market order. Whether it is the theft of trade secrets, malicious “poaching,” data scraping, or online commercial disparagement, the essence is not merely the infringement of a specific right, but rather an impact on the technological innovation order, talent competition order, platform governance order, and market trust mechanism. The People’s Courts are increasingly emphasizing the market impact and institutional spillover effects of such cases.
Second, the intensity of judicial protection continues to increase, but it is not an unconstrained expansion of rights; rather, it emphasizes “strict protection” and “clear boundaries” simultaneously. In the phrase-type trademark case, the court did not mechanically deny distinctiveness due to the special form of the mark; in the chip patent case, the court also did not easily expand the scope of patent protection due to the high value of technological innovation. This shows that the core of current intellectual property justice is not simply “favoring the rights holder,” but achieving more predictable protection based on rigorous reasoning.
Third, the coordinated use of diverse liability tools is becoming increasingly mature. Institutional tools such as punitive damages, the civil-criminal interface, platform joint and several liability, contributory infringement liability, and joint infringement determination have been flexibly applied in different cases, reflecting that intellectual property justice is forming a more multi-dimensional and precise liability system. This method of liability allocation allows different types of infringing acts to receive differentiated responses, thereby more effectively enhancing protection effectiveness.
Fourth, the rule of law in the digital economy has become a new growth point for intellectual property justice. Factors such as data interests, platform responsibility, algorithmic transmission, and traffic monetization frequently enter the core of adjudication, meaning that traditional intellectual property jurisprudence is constantly undergoing deep integration with the Anti-Unfair Competition Law, general provisions of the Civil Code, and network governance rules. Innovation in judicial protection of intellectual property in the future will, to a large extent, be reflected in the shaping of rules in these cross-cutting fields.
Of course, it should also be noted that the problems revealed by these cases have not been completely resolved by individual judgments. For example, the standards for layered protection of data interests still need to be further refined, and the intensity and scope of platform governance obligations also need to be constantly honed in practice; the boundary between malicious “poaching” and normal talent competition still requires more typological adjudication for clarification. The significance of typical cases lies not only in “giving answers” but also in “raising questions” and pointing the direction for the future evolution of rules.