China has achieved major breakthroughs in intellectual property (IP) system development during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-25), strengthening legal protections for AI, pharmaceuticals, and streaming media to foster innovation in emerging industries.
The fourth amendment to the Patent Law introduced a drug patent term extension system to compensate for regulatory delays, along with an early resolution mechanism for drug patent disputes, encouraging both new drug R&D and high-level generic drug manufacturing.
The 2025 revision of the Patent Examination Guidelines clarified that inventions involving AI are patentable, added "computer program product" as a new protected subject matter, and refined inventiveness standards to account for user experience improvements.
The guidelines also introduced dedicated provisions for bitstream patent applications, clarifying patentable subject matter and filing requirements to support the rapid growth of the streaming media industry.
A revised definition of "plant variety" expanded the scope of patentable subject matter, aligning the patent system with the new plant variety protection framework to strengthen IP protection in the seed industry.
The draft amendment to the Trademark Law, which has passed its first legislative review, strengthens penalties for bad-faith registrations and requires trademarks to be used in good faith.
China played a constructive role in concluding the WIPO Treaty on Intellectual Property, Genetic Resources and Associated Traditional Knowledge in 2024, establishing a global disclosure mechanism for patent applications.
Ongoing revisions to the Science and Technology Progress Law and the Regulations on the Protection of Layout-Designs of Integrated Circuits, alongside deeper data IP protection pilots, continue to strengthen IP governance in emerging fields.
