This article reviews eight landmark cases decided by the Supreme People's Court (SPC) between 2023 and 2025, a timeframe that closely follows critical 2019 amendments to the Anti-Unfair Competition Law.

Those reforms, which introduced burden-shifting rules, expanded damages, and concentrated technical IP adjudication in specialized courts, are now being actively enforced. The tight cluster of high-level decisions signals that commercial secrecy has become a strategic judicial priority and that courts intend to standardize doctrine.

All eight cases were reviewed by the SPC’s IP Tribunal, ensuring the holdings reflect authoritative judicial policy. Geographically, the disputes originate from China’s core innovation centers, including Shanghai, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Beijing, where high-value talent and high-value trade secrets in AI, advanced manufacturing, and biotech converge.Industry analysis confirms that China’s trade secret enforcement now focuses overwhelmingly on technology. Every case concerns technical information rather than customer lists or traditional commercial data. Two cases involve AI and digital software, protecting models, algorithms, and game engines. Two others address industrial software and advanced equipment, such as compressor selection platforms and new-energy vehicle chassis systems. Additional cases protect materials engineering processes, seed parent lines, semiconductor design architecture, and technical manufacturing drawings. Each type of secret reflects the commercial logic of its sector: code and logic in digital systems; specifications and process steps in manufacturing; and chemical compositions or genetic materials in life-science industries.

Former employees are the dominant threat vector. Seven out of eight cases involve individuals who had direct access to confidential technology and later joined or founded competitors. Two patterns emerge: entrepreneurial spin-offs led by former technical directors or lead developers, and coordinated talent raids in which rival companies recruit entire engineering teams to replicate the original employer’s technology rapidly. This reality underscores the importance of employee lifecycle governance, especially at exit.

Courts consistently define protectable secrets broadly. The threshold is not absolute novelty but whether the information has a material difference from what is publicly available. Chinese courts have rejected the argument that a secret becomes unprotectable merely because some of its components are in the public domain. In the chemical process case, the court emphasized that a combination of known technologies can still constitute a trade secret if the integration produces competitive value. In the seed parent line case, the court clarified that biological materials, before the registration of plant variety rights, can still embody protectable confidential information. What matters is value, confidentiality, and exclusivity, not formal IP registration.

Courts also take a pragmatic approach to secrecy measures. They apply a “reasonable efforts” standard rather than requiring perfect or fail-safe systems. Signed NDAs and employee manuals remain baseline protections. Still, decisions increasingly show that system implementation, such as access permissions, encrypted repositories, and digital traceability is more important than contractual paper alone. For example, GitLab access logs were decisive forensic evidence in the AI algorithm case. Chinese courts are rewarding companies that build operational compliance, not just legal documents.

Across all cases, the core infringement test is remarkably consistent. Suppose plaintiffs can demonstrate that defendants had access to the secret and that the accused technology performs in substantially similar ways. In that case, the burden shifts to defendants to prove independent R&D. Chinese courts accept functional similarity as evidence of copying, especially in digital and algorithmic contexts where code or model architecture may be intentionally obfuscated. Rapid development timelines, missing early-stage documentation, and product behavior correlation all serve as red flags undermining claims of lawful origin. The shift in evidentiary burdens is reshaping litigation strategy in China and strongly favors plaintiffs with modern data governance.

Remedies in these cases illustrate aggressive judicial enforcement. Seven plaintiffs prevailed fully or partially, supported by strong forensic evidence. Courts awarded damages based on infringer profits, reasonable royalty multipliers, or discretionary awards where direct financial proof was incomplete. Punitive damages were awarded in cases involving organizational misconduct or willful disregard of secrecy obligations, reaching RMB 6.4 billion (the NEV chassis case) and RMB 201.54 million (the chemical process case). Importantly, injunctions are not symbolic: Chinese courts routinely require destruction of infringing equipment or data systems, prohibit disposal of patents derived from confidential technology, and impose daily monetary penalties for delayed compliance, up to RMB 1 million per day. Enforcement is treated as a continuation of the adjudication, not an afterthought.

Procedurally, these cases demonstrate a high level of judicial sophistication in technical fact-finding. Criminal investigations were coordinated to secure evidence in the chemical case. Preliminary injunctions stopped infringing production before irreversible market harm occurred. Courts admitted digital evidence stored via third-party notary systems and employed technical investigators to evaluate complex engineering drawings. For emerging fields like AI, courts embraced indirect proof and logical inference, applying real-world technical reasoning rather than rigid mechanical comparison.

Taken together, these eight cases reveal a coherent enforcement philosophy. China’s courts prioritize protection of high-value innovation assets, view organized or repeated misappropriation as economically harmful conduct worthy of deterrence and treat injunctive relief as a powerful regulatory tool to remove unfair competitive advantage. They expect plaintiffs to preserve R&D evidence and access logs, and they expect defendants to produce credible independent development records if challenged.

Looking ahead, trade secret protection in China will remain stringent and increasingly specialized. As Chinese companies deepen their presence in global supply chains and as cross-border R&D collaboration rises, the number of cases involving overseas technology and multinational stakeholders will grow. Companies operating in China must build end-to-end secrecy governance: role-based access control, lifecycle employee management, encrypted technical repositories, rigorous exit audits, and contemporaneous R&D documentation. For legal counsel, mastery of the burden-shifting regime, punitive damages strategy, preliminary injunction practice, and technical evidence framing will be decisive to litigation success.

China has now positioned itself among the most assertive jurisdictions globally in protecting trade secrets. For forei    gn innovators and competitors alike, this environment rewards those who invest in proactive compliance and penalizes those who underestimate the enforcement power of China’s judiciary.

Reference list:
(2023) Supreme People’s Court IP Civil Final No. 1503
(2022) Supreme People’s Court IP Civil Final No. 1592
(2022) Supreme People’s Court IP Civil Final No. 1506
(2022) Supreme People’s Court IP Civil Final No. 147
(2023) Supreme People’s Court IP Civil Final No. 1530
(2024) Supreme People’s Court IP Civil Final No. 539
(2023) Supreme People’s Court IP Civil Final No. 816
(2023) Supreme People’s Court IP Civil Final No. 1590