The China We Hardly Know: Revealing the New China’s Intellectual Property Regime

The long-held and virtually unquestioned view about China from the United States and other Western nations is that China has a total disregard for intellectual property rights. Recent empirical data and translated Chinese judicial decisions, however, offer a startling new picture of China that directly contradicts the dominant negative view of China’s approach to intellectual property rights. Specifically, quantitative studies of recent Chinese patent, copyright, and trademark infringements cases reveal that China has become a litigious society and that there are more intellectual property litigation cases in China than in the United States. Chinese intellectual property owners are not hesitant to enforce their rights against other Chinese infringers, as seen through the tens of thousands of cases filed and concluded annually in recent years. Yet these new trends in China and on intellectual property rights have not been recognized in academic literature or the popular press. This Article reveals a more accurate picture of China’s intellectual property enforcements — one that would assist policy makers and legal scholars in their approaches to the New China. Further, this Article observes that China and the United States are at a crossroads with respect to intellectual property. Quantitative and qualitative studies of Chinese and United States intellectual property cases indicate that the New China is quickly moving to embrace a strong intellectual property rights system, while the United States is slowly moving towards a weaker intellectual property rights regime