China Once Stole Foreign Ideas. Now It Wants To Protect Its Own
2 41China'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.
2 comments
The Business Plan (Score: 5, Insightful)
by The Cat ( 19816 ) on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @11:10AM (#65994280)
Steal until you have it all, then hire a security guard.
Yes, the building is on fire. Don't panic. (Score: 5, Insightful)
by cpurdy ( 4838085 ) on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @11:19AM (#65994294)
This is an interesting topic, and one with precedent. It turns out that the United States was accused for many years of stealing inventions from the UK and other European countries (IIRC: starting with the industrial revolution and its relationship to fabric production), and as its economic dominance emerged, its IP protectionism grew with it. It has long been predicted that China would take a similar path, and while it does mean (with extra thanks to trump) that the sun is rapidly setting on the US empire, we shouldn't freak out about this. The correct course of action (as exhibited by China) is to invest heavily in education, modernization, infrastructure, and strategic subsidies. Unfortunately, the US is currently investing in corruption, culture wars, and nihilism instead, but we must assume that these errors are correctable and worth correcting.