CHINA – BEIJING Trends and Developments Contributed by: Ye Zhao and Liwei Jiang, Jingtian & Gongcheng
Trade Secret Adjudication Trends at China’s Supreme People’s Court: A Systematic Analysis of 2025 Judgments As global technology competition intensifies, trade secrets have become a critical strategic asset for enterprises. In November 2023, the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) IP Tribunal ceased accepting new trade secret and technical secret cases outside the cate - gory of major disputes. As a result, 2025 became the year in which the Tribunal concentrated its efforts on resolving a substantial backlog of complex, high-value cases – effectively issuing its final and most authorita - tive statement on trade secret adjudication standards. In late January 2026, China Judgment Online pub - lished a series of 2025 SPC IP Tribunal trade secret decisions. A careful reading of these judgments reveals a coherent, forceful, and systematic body of doctrine: the SPC dramatically elevated damages awards, shift - ed the burden of proof in meaningful ways, imposed severe sanctions for evidence obstruction, pierced corporate structures to reach ultimate beneficial own - ers, and asserted the full independence of civil trade secret proceedings from their criminal counterparts. This report examines 11 published 2025 judgments and the Tribunal’s annual report to identify nine core adjudication trends that will shape trade secret litiga - tion practice in China for years to come. The analysis draws on decisions spanning 11 distinct industries and collectively involving over CNY1 billion in dam - ages. Because 2025 marked the end of the SPC IP Tribunal’s large-scale trade secret jurisdiction, these decisions constitute the Tribunal’s definitive legacy in this area – and will function as authoritative guidance for lower courts across the country for the foresee - able future. Background and Publication Record From its founding in 2019 through 2025, the SPC IP Tribunal saw new trade secret filings rise from 12 cas - es to a peak of 113 in 2023, before falling sharply to 34 in 2024 following the jurisdictional reform. In 2025, the Tribunal adjudicated 51 technical secret cases on the merits, all drawn from the pre-reform backlog. As of 2 March 2026, 11 2025 judgments had been published on China Judgment Online – a disclosure
rate of approximately 22%, broadly consistent with the 24% rate for 2024 (29 of approximately 120 deci - sions). Whilst modest in absolute terms, the published set is large enough to support meaningful comparative analysis. The similarity in disclosure rates between the two years makes year-on-year comparison particu - larly reliable. The 11 cases span a range of industries – medical devices, oilfield equipment, AI fingerprint recognition, chemical production lines, quartz glass fibre, CNC machine tools, pharmaceutical intermediates, pack - aging steel strip, dry desulphurisation, and automotive air-conditioning compressors – and together repre - sent a combined damages award exceeding CNY1.02 billion. Typology of Infringing Conduct The 11 cases reveal two dominant infringement pat - terns. Departing employees and insiders (nine cases) The overwhelming majority of cases involve former employees or officers who misappropriated trade secrets upon or before departure. Three sub-patterns emerge, as follows. • Wholesale team departures and rapid product rep- lication: Senior management and core R&D teams collectively resigned and, within implausibly short timeframes, released products functionally identi - cal to those of their former employer. In the CBCT medical device case, 2023 SPC ZhiMinZhong No 3118 , the former general manager re-formed the entire R&D team, exploited the misappropri - ated secrets to file patents, and completed pur - ported development within six months. In the high-temperature submersible pump case, 2023 SPC ZhiMinZhong No 655 , the departing sales VP recruited 15 engineers who brought core blueprints to the new venture and used them to win tenders. • Pre-departure bulk exfiltration: In the CNC machine tool case, 2023 SPC ZhiMinZhong No 2039 , a senior designer systematically downloaded 37,340 drawings and technical documents across 160 model types in the month before resignation, then joined a competitor four days later under an alias.
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