Posts in China

In 2025, a patent dispute between Chinese companies in the camera-module space drew close attention across the industry — SUNNY v. AAC [Patent Reexamination and Invalidation Department Decision No. 566288, et al.]. The case ended with 11 patents invalidated, four of them in their entirety. There was a single reason: the claims were not supported by the specification.

Red Tape Index (RTI), a project of the regulatory intelligence platform Labrynth, published a patent index today placing the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) below every peer office measured on the price, speed, and openness of the patent system. The Patent Friction Index assigned the United States a composite score of -42.62, a figure that stayed negative under every alternative scoring rule tested.

Yesterday, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) published a report on the global patent landscape for generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies showing that newly published patent families in the sector increased more during 2024 and 2025 combined than the preceding decade. While the United States has enjoyed greater annual growth rates in published patent families in the sector, six of the top 10 patenting entities are located in China, underscoring the dominant position that country is securing in an incredibly valuable and critical sector of emerging technology.

Last week, economic consulting firm Cornerstone Research published a report, titled Intellectual Property Litigation: U.S. Trends in Global Perspective, detailing global diversification in patent litigation and indicating that the United States is no longer the dominant forum for patent disputes. This shift away from a U.S.-centric infringement landscape has taken place at the same time that intangible assets now represent the vast majority of corporate value with many intellectual property (IP) owners increasingly choosing trade secret protection for domestic disputes, a trend being driven by advances in artificial intelligence (AI) technology.

U.S. House Republicans recently introduced legislation that would prohibit entities on federal national security watchlists from receiving or enforcing U.S. patents. The Council for Innovation Promotion (C4IP) responded with a statement urging Congress to reconsider the bill. The legislation would prohibit the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) from issuing patents to individuals or entities identified as Chinese military-affiliated organizations.

To say we live in perplexing times is an understatement. Everything seems to be shifting beneath our feet, often with seemingly little thought. One example is the move to change how the federal government supports research. It wasn’t until the passage of the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980, which injected the incentives of patent ownership into the system, that the situation changed. And the result was dramatic.

During a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property hearing on the Oversight of the U.S. Copyright Office on Tuesday, the intersection of copyright law, artificial intelligence, and executive branch interference were the key focuses. Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter provided critical updates on the Copyright Office’s modernization efforts. However, the hearing was punctuated by sharp rebukes from Democratic senators regarding former President Donald Trump’s recent attempts to assert executive control over the legislative branch agency.

On April 30, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) released this year’s Special 301 Report, which surveys the effectiveness of intellectual property (IP) rights and enforcement abroad and identifies foreign nations where IP protections are uncertain or disregarded. The 2026 report marks the first time in 13 years that a Priority Foreign Country (PFC) has been named, with Vietnam being identified as a PFC for persistent failures to address several long-standing IP concerns. The USTR has also added the European Union (EU) to the Special 301 Report’s Watch List, the first time since 2006 that the continental government has been identified for IP-related concerns in addition to individual European nations.

China was not the only actor being scrutinized today during a full Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, titled “Stealth Stealing: China’s Ongoing Theft of U.S. Innovation.”  Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) stood in for Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) as Chair and opened the hearing with a warning that, in addition to its blatant IP theft—which is estimated to cost the United States between $400 billion and $600 billion per year—China is more recently evolving from “imitator to innovator.” “The United States must overcome its historic and ideological views that China is unable to innovate,” Tillis said.

I have been to China several times over the past decade. Each time, I came back with the same reaction: too many people in the United States are still badly underestimating what is happening there. I do not say that as a political statement. I say it as a practical one. There is still a surprisingly common view in American business circles that China’s patent activity is mostly noise. Too many filings. Too much subsidy. Too little real innovation. The implication is that, yes, China may be filing a mountain of patents, but most of it can safely be discounted. I think that view is becoming harder and harder to defend.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Innovation Policy Center (GIPC) today released its 2026 International IP Index, which flagged concerning trends about the “growing erosion of IP leadership” among the world’s high-performing economies, according to the report’s authors. In particular, the report noted that scores in eight EU Member States have declined this year, although the top ten rankings remained the same from 2025. The United States was again number one, with a relatively stable score of 95.15% compared with last year’s 95.17%.

The Trump Administration is trying to counter China on nearly every strategic front, from the South China Sea to the factory floor. Yet the Administration, and Congress, haven’t yet done much to address one of America’s biggest vulnerabilities—the steady decline of our once world-class system of intellectual property (IP) rights.

Yesterday, the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Intellectual Property held a hearing titled Foreign Threats to American Innovation and Economic Leadership, featuring testimony from private businesses on the myriad challenges facing American intellectual property (IP) owners in the face of illegal activities sponsored by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Along with consumer safety and national security risks, the day’s hearing featured discussion of several IP-related bills, some of which will be introduced into Congress in the coming days.

A group of Chinese companies struck out for a second time at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Monday when the court ruled they lacked foreign sovereign immunity and therefore are not shielded from an indictment for economic espionage in connection with their alleged efforts to steal trade secrets from E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company (DuPont).