CHINA Trends and Developments Contributed by: Binxin Li, Sally Wang, Guangzhen Shang and Yue He, LeanWill Law Firm
ent Infringement Dispute Cases, which has not yet been formally promulgated or entered into force. High- lights of the Draft include: • clarifying claim construction and infringement determination rules by summarising key develop- ments in judicial cases recently – eg, estoppel rule for claim construction and natural solidification rule for infringement establishment; • perfecting the rules against malicious patent enforcement – eg, clarifying the typical scenarios constituting malicious patent enforcement; • specifying the procedure relating to jurisdiction objection to accelerate related case handling; and • streamlining the co-ordination between patent infringement case and related invalidation and other cases. Amendment to the Guidelines for Patent Examination On 10 November 2025, CNIPA released amendments to the “Guidelines for Patent Examination”, and the amendments took effect on 1 January 2026. The amendments introduced a chapter on Artificial Intel- ligence and Big Data, explicitly prohibiting data col- lection, labelling management, rule configuration, and recommendation algorithms from containing content that violates laws and regulations, social ethics, or public interests. It also mandates disclosure of model architecture, training procedures, etc, in the specifi- cation to avoid insufficient disclosure. Furthermore, it also clarifies the drafting format and requirements for product claims that include a bitstream. Through the amendments, CNIPA also clarified the definition of plant varieties that shall not be protected under Article 25 of the PRC Patent Law. The plant vari- ety now refers to a plant population that has been arti- ficially bred or discovered and subsequently improved, exhibiting consistent morphological characteristics and biological properties with stable genetic traits. Further, if the populations of plants and their propa- gating material obtained through artificial breeding or improvement of discovered wild plants do not exhibit consistent morphological characteristics and biologi- cal properties or stable genetic traits, they shall not be considered as “plant varieties”, thereby establishing an effective interface between the patent system and
the plant variety protection regime, preventing gaps in IP protection for seed industry innovation, effectively safeguarding the intellectual property rights of seed enterprises, and better promoting the development of the biological breeding industry. Judicial Trends and Developments: Landmark Cases Balancing AIGC innovation and protection Copyrightability of AIGC China’s current copyright framework does not explic- itly address whether AI-generated content (AIGC) constitutes a protectable work under the China Copy- right Law. Despite this legislative gap, Chinese courts have adjudicated a series of landmark cases in recent years, which directly engage with the issue of AIGC copyrightability. Moreover, over the past few years, Chinese courts have gradually tightened and refined their judicial standards for determining the copyright- ability of AIGC, which indicates a clear shift in the adjudicative approach to AIGC copyright disputes. Between 2023 and 2024, courts generally adopted a relatively liberal stance towards the recognition of AIGC copyrightability. For example, the Beijing Inter- net Court held in the first text-to-image case ((2023) Jing 0491 Min Chu No 11279) that an image gener- ated using the Stable Diffusion model qualified as a copyrightable work. The court emphasised the user’s role in prompt design and final image selection, and recognised the user as the copyright owner. Similar reasoning was adopted by courts in Changshu ((2024) Su 0581 Min Chu No 6697) and Wuhan East Lake High-Tech District ((2024) E 0192 Zhi Min Chu No 968), where the plaintiffs’ iterative prompt designs and revi- sions, parameter adjustments and multiple grounds of image selection, were sufficient to demonstrate origi- nality and human intellectual creativity, thus conferring copyright ownership on the plaintiffs. By 2025, however, Chinese courts have shifted to a more stringent, evidence-centric standard for deter- mining the copyrightability of AIGC. In a case ((2024) Su 0582 Min Chu No 9015) decided by Zhangjiagang People’s Court in April 2025, whose ruling was later upheld on appeal by the Suzhou Intermediate Peo- ple’s Court, it was held that the copyrightability of AIGC requires the plaintiff to submit complete creation
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