Intellectual property in China

Intellectual property rights (IPRs) have been acknowledged and protected in China since 1980. China has acceded to the major international conventions on protection of rights to intellectual property. Domestically, protection of intellectual property law has also been established by government legislation, administrative regulations, and decrees in the areas of trademark, copyright, and patent.

China first began accepting foreign IP concepts when foreign countries forced the Qing dynasty to accept them as part of the bilateral treaties that followed the Boxer Protocol. The early People's Republic of China abolished the statutes enacted by China's Nationalist government and adopted an approach to copyright, trademark, and patent issues more consistent with the model of the Soviet Union. Chinese policymakers became interested in integrating into the global IP framework as the government sought to import more technology in the 1970s. In the 1980s, China began to join international treaties on IP issues. After joining the World Trade Organization in 2001, it assumed IP obligations under the TRIPS Agreement and revised its domestic laws to conform to the TRIPS standards. Although China's IP framework has developed quickly, as of 2023 it remains less developed than most industrialized countries. The trend as of 2023 is that China's IP governance is continuing to grow closer to the EU and U.S. systems.

Internationally, China's view is that the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) should be the primary international forum for IP rule-making. Generally, China's approach internationally is to advocate for maintaining the TRIPS standards, sometimes joining with other developing countries to oppose an increase in obligations beyond TRIPS.