The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission released the 2023 Report to Congress. This Report includes issues in the field of intellectual property in China.

In 2020 and 2021, Chinese courts aggressively issued orders to prevent foreign patent holders from suing Chinese companies for IP infringement. These orders called anti-suit injunctions (ASIs), hold plaintiffs in contempt of court in China and can impose fines if they proceed with cases abroad.

In common law jurisdictions, ASIs are interim orders that prohibit litigants from initiating or continuing parallel litigation in another jurisdiction to prevent cases from being heard simultaneously in different jurisdictions. The implementation of ASIs by Chinese courts differs from this practice, demonstrating their politicized nature. ASIs issued by Chinese courts target only foreign litigation and apply only to cases outside China. They are also nontransparent, as many Chinese courts’ decisions are not published, and their application has no clear legal basis.

 Cases using ASIc were often highly intrusive on the sovereignty of foreign courts to adjudicate patent claims granted in their respective jurisdictions. As patents are territorial, only national courts adjudicate local patents’ claims, unless the parties have agreed otherwise, which is rare.

Fortunately, China appears to have stopped issuing global ASIs for IP-related cases after the EU filed a case against China in 2022 over its use of ASIs to prevent EU companies from defending their SEPs.