At an April 23, 2025, press conference, China’s Supreme People’s Procuratorate (SPP) announced the launch of the Intellectual Property Procuratorate. Li Xuehui, Director of the General Office (Public Information Office) and Spokesperson of the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, stated, “since the 18th CPC National Congress, the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping as the core has elevated intellectual property protection to a national strategy. The report of the 20th CPC National Congress clearly pointed out the need to ‘strengthen the legal protection of intellectual property rights,’ which has pointed out the direction for procuratorial work in the new era. Recently, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, after research and approval from the Office of the Central Organization and Establishment Commission, added ‘Intellectual Property Procuratorate’ to the Economic Crime Procuratorate of the Supreme People’s Procuratorate. Today’s press conference is the first time that the Intellectual Property Procuratorate of the Supreme People’s Procuratorate has appeared to the public. The formal establishment of the Intellectual Property Procuratorate of the Supreme People’s Procuratorate reflects the CPC Central Committee’s high attention to intellectual property protection and marks that China’s judicial protection of intellectual property rights has further entered a stage of professionalization and integration. “

Initially, the SPP launched an intellectual property office in November 2020 with pilot offices in nine provinces/municipalities including Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Chongqing, Sichuan and Hainan.

In August 2021, the SPP stipulated that the Intellectual Property Office would be responsible for procuratorial functions of criminal, civil, administrative and public interest litigation for IP rights.

In March 2022, the SPP issues the “Opinions of Comprehensively Strengthening IP Procuratorial Work in the New Era,” clarifying the guiding ideology, basic principles, goals, tasks and specific measures for IP procuratorial work.

In June 2022, the “Mona Lisa” trademark dispute was retried and the verdict changed. This was the first IP administrative litigation supervision case that was appealed by the SPP and successfully changed since the establishment of the IP Office. As explained by the SPP in their 48th Batch of Guiding Cases Focusing on IP:

On November 11, 2021, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate lodged a protest with the Supreme People’s Court, believing that the second-instance judgment in this case contained errors in the determination of facts and application of law. The main reason is that the “bathroom (water closet), toilet” products approved for use in the disputed trademark and the “bathroom fixtures” products approved for use in the cited trademark constitute similar products. The disputed trademark and the cited trademark are similar in terms of text composition, name, constituent elements, etc., and constitute similar trademarks….The Supreme People’s Court ordered the Beijing Higher People’s Court to retry the case. On June 14, 2022, the Beijing Higher People’s Court made a judgment that the disputed trademark and the cited trademark constitute similar trademarks used on similar goods…The Beijing Higher People’s Court revised the verdict after retrial and revoked the second-instance judgment and the first-instance judgment in this case.

In July 2022, the SPP issued the “Implementation Plan for National Procuratorial Organs to Carry Out Special Supervision Work on Punishing Malicious IP Litigation.”

In January 2023, the SPP established a national IP prosecution pool with 90 members and later increased to 132 members.

By the end of 2023, all provincial level procuratorates have established IP prosecution departments. 

A transcript of the press conference is available here (Chinese only). A brief history from the SPP of SPP IP prosecution can be found here (Chinese only).