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 category 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 authoritative statement on trade secret adjudication standards.

In late January 2026, China Judgment Online published 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, shifted the burden of proof in meaningful ways, imposed severe sanctions for evidence obstruction, pierced corporate structures to reach ultimate beneficial owners, 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 litigation practice in China for years to come. The analysis draws on decisions spanning 11 distinct industries and collectively involving over CNY1 billion in damages. 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 foreseeable future.

Background and Publication Record

From its founding in 2019 through 2025, the SPC IP Tribunal saw new trade secret filings rise from 12 cases 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 decisions). 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 particularly 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, packaging steel strip, dry desulphurisation, and automotive air-conditioning compressors – and together represent a combined damages award exceeding CNY1.02 billion.

Typology of Infringing Conduct

The 11 cases reveal two dominant infringement patterns.

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 replication: Senior management and core R&D teams collectively resigned and, within implausibly short timeframes, released products functionally identical 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 misappropriated secrets to file patents, and completed purported 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.
• Direct commercialisation of stolen secrets: In the packaging steel strip case, 2023 SPC ZhiMinZhong No 868, a departing department head sold a complete set of proprietary production drawings to a third party for CNY350,000, then assisted in building an infringing production line.

Breach of confidentiality by commercial partners (two cases)

In the dry desulphurisation case, 2023 SPC ZhiMinZhong No 2880, a contractual partner received complete process parameters for a collaborative project, promptly filed patents on the technology, and disclosed it to two further companies for a separate contract worth over CNY300 million. In the pharmaceutical intermediate case, 2023 SPC ZhiMinZhong No 642, a counterparty holding roles simultaneously as shareholder, export agent, and contract manufacturer extracted updated process drawings under the guise of regulatory disclosure, then transferred the technology to a company under his own control.

Overall Appellate Outcome: Across-the-Board Reversal in Favour of Rights Holders

All 11 published 2025 judgments are second-instance decisions in which the SPC reversed or materially modified the lower court ruling. This is highly unusual in the history of published SPC decisions and is itself a deliberate signal.

• Five cases (first instance: dismissed): Lower courts dismissed on grounds of overly strict secrecy standards, insufficient evidence, or procedural bars. The SPC reversed in all five, finding infringement and awarding damages ranging from CNY500,000 to CNY28.87 million.
• Four cases (first instance: infringement found, damages increased): Lower courts found infringement but applied conservative damages methodologies. The SPC substantially recalculated profits, applied punitive multipliers, and increased awards by factors ranging from 9× to almost 30×.
• Two cases (damages affirmed): The SPC affirmed the damages quantum whilst adjusting joint liability scope, 2023 SPC ZhiMinZhong No 655, or converting independent liability to joint liability with an elevated punitive multiplier, 2023 SPC ZhiMinZhong No 2467.

This pattern is reinforced by macro statistics: the SPC’s overall civil reversal rate rose from 23.3% in 2024 to 26.3% in 2025, with trade secret cases exhibiting reversal rates and damages escalation far exceeding the system-wide average.

Nine Core Adjudication Trends

Trend 1: A quantum leap in damages – high awards are now the norm

The aggregate damages awarded across the 11 published cases exceeded CNY1.02 billion, with a mean of approximately CNY93.1 million and a median of CNY50.3 million per case. Three cases exceeded CNY100 million; 54% exceeded CNY50 million; and 81% exceeded CNY10 million.

The contrast with 2024 is dramatic. In 2024, excluding the statistical outlier of the WM Motor v Geely case (CNY643 million), the median damages award was only CNY1.84 million; 20 of 22 successful claimants received less than CNY6 million. The 2025 median is approximately 27 times higher than its 2024 counterpart. This is not a function of one exceptional case; it reflects a systemic recalibration across the entire spectrum of the docket.

Trend 2: The damages surge is driven primarily by second-instance correction

First-instance awards remained in the millions-to-low-tens-of-millions range – consistent with the historical pattern of conservative lower court adjudication. Second-instance corrections by the SPC are behind the surge. Among the four cases where damages were increased on appeal, the minimum multiplier was 9× and the maximum was approximately 29.8×. Five further cases moved from total dismissal to awards ranging from CNY500,000 to CNY28.87 million.

This structural pattern has a direct practical implication: at present, the strength of trade secret protection in China depends substantially on the ability to bring a case before the SPC. First-instance courts continue to exhibit notable conservatism in secrecy determination, evidence assessment, and damages calculation. The SPC’s 2025 decisions function not merely as individual remedies but as binding guidance to lower courts on the minimum acceptable level of protection – guidance that, given the Tribunal’s substantially reduced caseload going forward, will carry considerable precedential weight.

Trend 3: Evidence obstruction triggers direct punitive escalation

In four of the 11 cases, defendants refused to produce financial records, sales data, or technical drawings in response to court orders. The SPC characterised this conduct as “evidence obstruction” (举证妨碍) and treated it as a direct trigger for the highest punitive multipliers.

No 1228 (Chemical Production Line):

The defendant ignored a court order to produce tax filings. The SPC used the plaintiff’s highest recorded profit margin (45.33%) and the defendant’s own quoted unit price (CNY300,000/tonne) to calculate infringing profits and awarded the full claimed amount of CNY60 million.

No 2039 (CNC Machine Tools):

The defendant refused to produce technical records and actively confused the proceedings. The SPC applied a 3× punitive multiplier, yielding a CNY381.63 million award.

No 3118 (CBCT Medical Devices):

The defendant refused at both first and second instance to submit production and sales volumes. The SPC used the defendant’s own publicly declared projected sales figures as the base and applied a 1× punitive multiplier, awarding the full claimed amount of CNY198.96 million.

The practical message is unambiguous: refusing to produce court-ordered evidence does not reduce liability, it directly elevates a defendant’s exposure to the maximum available punitive damages. Courts will use the plaintiff’s most favourable available assumptions, highest profit margin, highest unit price, publicly stated forecasts, to calculate the base, and will then apply the maximum punitive multiplier. The anticipated benefit of withholding records is wholly illusory.

Trend 4: Technical contribution rate maximised – value-apportionment logic rejected

In trade secret cases, courts have historically borrowed the value-apportionment framework from patent law, routinely assigning contribution rates of 10%–15%. In the 2025 decisions, the SPC established a clear contrary principle: where the trade secret directly determined the infringer’s ability to enter the market or capture a commercial opportunity, the contribution rate is either 100% or the question does not arise – all infringing profits are attributed to the secret.

Of eight cases in which contribution rate was addressed, five assigned 100% or no apportionment at all (2023 ZhiMinZhong No 2039; 2023 ZhiMinZhong No 868; 2023 ZhiMinZhong No 655; 2023 ZhiMinZhong No 3118; and 2023 ZhiMinZhong No 2880). Rates of 75% (2023 ZhiMinZhong No 2467); 33% (2023 ZhiMinZhong No 1228); and 20% (2023 ZhiMinZhong No 445) were applied only where the secret was one component among several and other intellectual property clearly contributed to the product’s value.

This shift has substantial practical consequences. Under the old apportionment approach, a trade secret worth hundreds of millions of yuan in commercial value might generate a damages base of only tens of millions after applying a 10%–15% contribution factor. Under the 2025 framework, where the secret is the gateway to the market opportunity, the entire profit stream is available as the base for damages – before any punitive multiplier is applied. The interaction of 100% contribution rates with punitive multipliers of three times explains much of the dramatic damages escalation visible in the 2025 data.

Trend 5: Substantive shift in the burden of proof – the evidentiary threshold is lowered

Trade secret rights holders have long struggled with the practical impossibility of proving covert misappropriation by direct evidence. The SPC activated Article 32 of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law to materially shift the burden to defendants in multiple cases.

• Rule 1 – Access plus substantial similarity is sufficient: In 2023 SPC ZhiMinZhong No 1669, the Court held that requiring direct evidence of misappropriation is “unduly difficult” given the inherently covert nature of trade secret theft; once the claimant establishes access and substantial similarity, the burden shifts to the defendant to disprove infringement.
• Rule 2 – Multiple defendants: burden further reduced: In 2023 SPC ZhiMinZhong No 642, where evidence pointed strongly to a joint enterprise, the Court held that the claimant’s burden is “further reduced” and defendants must affirmatively prove they did not participate.
• Rule 3 – Functional comparison as reverse-engineering proxy: In AI fingerprint recognition case 2023 SPC ZhiMinZhong No 1503, since the plaintiff could not access the defendant’s source code, the Court devised a point-reading test in which both products were exposed to identical test subjects and materials. The “high degree of consistency” in outputs – including identification, localisation, phonetic rendering, and even shared misidentification patterns – was held sufficient to infer that the defendant had used the plaintiff’s algorithm and training data. This methodology creates a powerful evidential route in technology cases where direct access to underlying code or technical files is practically unavailable.

The combined effect of Rules 1–3 is a materially more accessible litigation path for trade secret claimants. Rights holders need no longer rely on direct evidence of misappropriation, circumstantial inference, behavioural anomalies, and product comparison can establish the prima facie case, after which the burden to rebut falls on the party with access to the relevant evidence.

Trend 6: Scrutiny of the defendants’ evidence

Once the claimant establishes the access-plus-similarity inference, defendants routinely respond with staged laboratory records, signed design drawings, and internal research reports. In the 2025 decisions, the SPC abandoned formalistic review and applied rigorous scrutiny across three dimensions:

• Development timeline plausibility: In 2023 SPC ZhiMinZhong No 1503, the plaintiff required 19 months and substantial human resources to develop its AI fingerprint recognition model; the defendant claimed to have completed an equivalent product within two months of incorporation, and without access to comparable training data “plainly inconsistent with ordinary experience”. In No 642, the defendant alleged that a complex one-pot esterification rearrangement process was taken from first small-scale trial to commercial production in just over one month – again, held to contradict general scientific and industrial knowledge of development timelines.
• Internal consistency of records: In 2023 SPC ZhiMinZhong No 642, laboratory notebooks showed no corrections and recorded first-attempt success; multiple submitted versions contained discrepancies between copies and originals, and bore signs of backdating. In No 1669, work instruction sheets were dated earlier than the corresponding design drawings they purported to implement, reversing the ordinary sequence of documentation.
• Continuity of evidence chain: In 2023 SPC ZhiMinZhong No 2039, the defendant admitted at trial to having destroyed all drawings, both paper and electronic, of the infringing products. The Court found it “contrary to ordinary logic” to simultaneously assert independent development and acknowledge destruction of the entire technical record.

Trend 7: Holistic secrecy comparison – the “salami-slicing” defence is rejected

Defendants routinely attempt to disaggregate complex proprietary processes into individual technical features and cite separate public-domain references to show each element is already known. The SPC firmly rejected this methodology in the 2025 cases, establishing the “holistic secrecy point comparison” principle across three dimensions:

• Part-public does not make the whole public: In 2022 SPC ZhiMinZhong No 445, the SPC stated: “The presence of some commonly-known techniques or process combinations within a body of technical information does not negate the secrecy of that information as a whole; analysis must be conducted holistically to determine whether the key elements of the overall scheme are generally known to and readily obtainable by relevant persons”. In No 2880, where the first-instance court dismissed on a point-by-point basis, the SPC reversed on the ground that the seven secrecy points together constituted a specific integrated process and must be assessed as a unit.
• Single-document comparison rule: In 2023 SPC ZhiMinZhong No 1228, the SPC held that secrecy challenges “must ordinarily employ the single-document comparison principle” – only one prior article reference may be cited against any given secrecy element. The defendant’s reliance on at least three combined references “paradoxically confirmed” that the secret was not readily obtainable by a person skilled in the field.
• Correction of expert fragmentation: In 2023 SPC ZhiMinZhong No 642, the first-instance expert opinion isolated the “n-heptane extraction” step and characterised it as general knowledge. The SPC overruled: the plaintiff’s trade secret was an “inseparable, integrated process” combining the one-pot esterification rearrangement, n-heptane extraction, and crystallisation steps; artificially severing them produced an error and would not be adopted.

The holistic comparison principle represents a doctrinal alignment of Chinese trade secret law with the nature of industrial know-how. Proprietary processes derive their competitive value not from any single step but from the specific combination, sequence, and parameterisation of multiple elements – many of which may be individually disclosed in the prior article.The SPC’s insistence on assessing the combination as a unit reflects a commercially realistic understanding of how technology advantage is actually created and protected.

Trend 8: Piercing the corporate veil – expanded liability for all enabling Parties

The SPC applied a clear “substance over form” approach to liability, refusing to allow beneficial owners, financial backers, or enabling service providers to shelter behind corporate separateness.

• Shadow controllers held jointly liable: In 2023 SPC ZhiMinZhong No 642, the individual who orchestrated the misappropriation whilst simultaneously holding roles as shareholder, export agent, and contract manufacturer was held jointly and severally liable for the full CNY80 million award alongside the two infringing companies. In No 445, the external investor who recruited and compensated the defecting employees was held to have used the infringing company as his tool and was jointly liable for CNY28.87 million.
• Purchasers, investors, construction contractors, and project owners all jointly liable: In 2023 SPC ZhiMinZhong No 868, the buyer of stolen drawings continued using them even after the seller’s criminal conviction and was held to have acted with deliberate intent, resulting in a five times punitive multiplier. In 2023 SPC ZhiMinZhong No 1228, the construction contractor who built the infringing facility – having previously been shown confidential layouts – was held to have turned a blind eye and was found grossly negligent, attracting joint liability up to CNY20 million. In 2023 SPC ZhiMinZhong No 2880, two further companies that engaged the infringing process without due diligence on its provenance, and that profited handsomely from the resulting contract, were made jointly liable for amounts of CNY22.29 million and CNY13.38 million, respectively.
• The principle established is broad: Any party in the infringing chain that provided capital, monetisation channels, or physical infrastructure, and that knew or should have known of the misappropriation, bears joint and several liability commensurate with its contribution and benefit.

Trend 9: Civil and criminal proceedings are substantively independent

Rights holders historically relied heavily on criminal investigation as a prerequisite for civil enforcement – both for evidence and for jurisdictional confidence. The SPC’s 2025 decisions fundamentally severed that link, affirming the full independence of civil trade secret proceedings from criminal outcomes.

• No criminal case? No obstacle: In 2023 SPC ZhiMinZhong No 1228, the local police declined to open a criminal investigation, issuing a formal non-prosecution notice. The SPC nonetheless applied civil evidentiary standards, found infringement, and awarded the full claimed amount of CNY60 million. In 2023 SPC ZhiMinZhong No 642, the Hangzhou Public Security Bureau declined to investigate for “insufficient evidence”. The civil court independently established the facts, applied a three times punitive multiplier, and ordered joint liability totalling CNY80 million.
• Civil scope and remedy may substantially exceed criminal outcomes: In 2023 SPC ZhiMinZhong No 868, the parallel criminal proceeding had ordered disgorgement of CNY700,000 (measured as the seller’s profit from the sale of drawings). The SPC distinguished this from the civil claim, which targeted the buyer’s entire infringing production profits plus a punitive multiplier, and awarded CNY10.27 million – almost 15 times the criminal recovery. In 2023 SPC ZhiMinZhong No 2039, the criminal investigation had examined only a subset of models and technical files. The SPC corrected the first instance’s error of limiting civil protection to the scope of the criminal examination and instead protected all 37,340 misappropriated drawings and documents, yielding a 3× punitive award of CNY381.63 million.
• The SPC’s articulation is explicit: the scope of technical secrets defined for criminal forensic purposes “does not automatically equate” to the scope of trade secret protection available in civil proceedings. The civil court is entitled – and required – to assess the full extent of the rights holder’s confidential information without regard to the subset examined by police forensic experts.

Viewed systemically, Trend 9 resolves what has long been a structural vulnerability in Chinese trade secret enforcement: the hostage-taking effect of the criminal threshold. When criminal prosecution was the gateway to civil recovery, the “beyond reasonable doubt” standard effectively determined the floor of civil protection. That coupling has now been severed. Civil courts apply civil standards, conduct independent fact-finding, and are not bound – in either direction – by criminal outcomes. Rights holders may pursue, and obtain, full civil remedies irrespective of the criminal process.

Conclusion

The 2025 decisions represent the SPC IP Tribunal’s final comprehensive statement on trade secret adjudication before the jurisdictional reform takes full effect. Taken together, they establish a cohesive framework built on three interlocking mechanisms: maximum economic sanctions to destroy the profit motive for misappropriation; full-chain liability to dismantle the organisational infrastructure of theft; and a materially lowered evidentiary burden to remove the structural disadvantage that claimants have historically suffered.

China’s civil trade secret protection has moved decisively from a passive model – dependent on criminal proceedings for evidence and on statutory minima for damages – to an active protective regime in which punitive damages are fully deployed, evidential burdens are reallocated, and the independence of civil courts from criminal process is asserted without reservation.

For rights holders, the combination of substantively lower evidentiary thresholds, 100% technical contribution recognition where the secret defines the commercial opportunity, and multi-party joint liability means that thorough preparation and precise claim construction will, more reliably than at any prior time, produce proportionate judicial redress.

For potential infringers, the shield of corporate personality has been materially weakened; the liability perimeter now extends to investors, purchasers, and contractors; and the refusal to produce court-ordered evidence is itself treated as evidence of the most serious culpability, directly triggering maximum punitive multipliers. Conventional damage-limitation strategies – destroying records, using shell vehicles, limiting formal involvement – have each been specifically identified and rejected by the SPC. The cost of misappropriation, including the cost of an unsuccessful cover-up, has never been higher.

These decisions, issued at the close of an era for the SPC IP Tribunal’s trade secret jurisdiction, will serve as a long-lasting benchmark for courts at every level across China. Their influence will be amplified precisely because the Tribunal will no longer be generating large volumes of new trade secret precedent. The 11 cases analysed here – and the dozens of unpublished judgments that follow the same doctrinal trajectory – constitute the Tribunal’s definitive adjudicatory legacy in this area of law.

For practitioners advising either side, the message is the same: the era of low-stakes, conservatively adjudicated trade secret litigation in China is over. The SPC has recalibrated the entire incentive structure, and the new equilibrium favours rights holders who invest in rigorous evidence preparation and precise legal strategy.