The US and the EU accuse China of using its legal system to subvert foreign IP rights and help local companies in industries Beijing deems important, like tech
Wall Street Journal : Tweets: @preddy85 and @markc_anderson Tweets: T. Prashant Reddy / @preddy85 : Fascinating reporting on American companies complainining about Chinese courts being biased against them in patent disputes over cutting edge litigation - this on the heels of the recent WTO complaints about China's anti-suit injunctions in SEP cases. https://www.wsj.com/... Mark Anderson / @markc_anderson : China is using its courts and patent panels to undermine foreign intellectual-property rights and help Chinese businesses in strategic industries including technology, pharmaceuticals and rare-earth minerals, US and EU officials say. https://www.wsj.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This accusation is the latest escalation in a documented pattern: since at least 2021, Beijing has deployed anti-suit injunctions to shield Huawei and Xiaomi from global patent litigation, forcing foreign SEP holders to fight on Chinese terms. The US and EU complaint extends that critique beyond injunctions to the courts and patent panels themselves, naming strategic sectors — technology, pharmaceuticals, rare-earth minerals — where judicial outcomes now appear aligned with industrial policy.
It also connects two older threads: the IP-sharing demands Washington firms faced back in 2015 and the push by both blocs against China's influence in standards bodies like ITU, IEEE and 3GPP. With the dispute now framed as a WTO matter, IP enforcement is being contested openly as an instrument of statecraft rather than settled bilaterally.
First-order effects
- Foreign patent owners in tech and pharma face a court system that US and EU officials describe as tilted toward domestic champions, making Chinese forums a losing venue for enforcing their rights.
- SEP holders are doubly constrained: injunctions already bar them from suing globally over standard-essential patents, and the formal US-EU complaint raises the prospect of WTO-level retaliation.
Second-order effects
- Multinationals will restructure licensing strategy around avoiding Chinese jurisdiction — filing elsewhere, settling early with Chinese implementers, or pricing IP risk into market-entry decisions for China.
- A joint US-EU front pressures other jurisdictions to pick sides, echoing the earlier split when European firms complained that Huawei sanctions shut them out of China while American rivals got exceptions.
Third-order effects
- If courts keep functioning as an arm of industrial policy, the global IP system fragments into competing enforcement zones, weakening the presumption that a patent enforced anywhere is enforceable everywhere.
- Standards bodies become the next battleground: control over SEPs depends on who sets the standards, so the same governments accusing Beijing of judicial bias will keep contesting its role in ITU, IEEE and 3GPP.
The trend: Intellectual property is shifting from a neutral legal asset to an instrument of state industrial policy, with courts, injunctions and standards bodies each becoming levers in the US-China-EU technology contest.