China Once Stole Foreign Ideas. Now It Wants To Protect Its Own

Source: Slashdot

China’s courts are now handling more than 550,000 intellectual-property cases a year—making it the world’s most litigious country for IP disputes—as the nation’s own companies, once notorious for copying foreign designs and technology, find themselves on the defensive against a domestic counterfeiting epidemic fueled by excess factory capacity.

The problem runs from knockoff “Lafufu” plush toys (cheap copies of Pop Mart’s wildly popular Labubu dolls, which prompted a nationwide crackdown and a Shanghai police bust of a $1.7 million stash in July) to copied motorcycles and solar panels. Judges in Shanghai, the preferred venue for IP litigation, are working through cases at a rate of roughly one per day, and it still takes three months for a case to land on a court’s docket.

Chinese companies are also increasingly clashing abroad: patent‑related cases involving Chinese businesses in America surged 56 % in 2023, according to data from GEN, a Chinese law firm. Luckin Coffee and Trina Solar have both filed suits against foreign‑based copycats.