On October 14, the National Intellectual Property Administration and the General Administration of Customs jointly issued the “Opinions on Strengthening Collaborative Protection of Intellectual Property.” The “Opinions” propose deepening cooperation between intellectual property management departments and customs in intellectual property protection, jointly promoting the establishment of a work pattern of “strict, large, fast, and simultaneous protection” for intellectual property.

For Chinese companies actively expanding into overseas markets, this document is not only a guide for administrative law enforcement cooperation but also an important institutional guarantee for product exports. The key tasks mentioned in the “Opinions” directly address pain points enterprises face during the “patent export” process, such as border seizures, infringement and counterfeiting, and overseas rights protection.

Below, based on the original text of the “Opinions,” we summarize the core policies with the most substantial impact on companies going global.

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Key Work One: Strengthen Information Sharing

[Key Points of the Original Text]

The National Intellectual Property Administration and the General Administration of Customs shall establish a long-term cooperation mechanism for data sharing and application on the basis of ensuring data security. The National Intellectual Property Administration regularly provides basic data such as trademarks and patents to the General Administration of Customs to facilitate intellectual property rights holders in handling customs filings; Share information on confirmation of well-known trademarks, information on trademarks that have been canceled or declared invalid, and administrative adjudication decisions on major patent infringement disputes to assist customs enforcement. The General Administration of Customs regularly provides the National Intellectual Property Administration with information on trademarks and patents filed for customs protection, as well as information on confiscated trademark and patent cases, for reference by the National Intellectual Property Administration in its intellectual property protection work. The National Intellectual Property Administration and the General Administration of Customs shall mutually notify each other of their respective administrative enforcement responses for trademarks and patents, promoting the unification of standards for determining trademark and patent infringement. Jointly promote intellectual property informatization and improve data sharing functions.

[Comment Analysis]

In the past, there was a data time lag between the National Intellectual Property Administration and border enforcement customs. When customs inspects import and export goods, it is difficult to know in real time whether a patent has been declared invalid or the outcome of an administrative ruling related to infringement disputes. This leads to lengthy filing processes, slow inspection and release, and even delayed information that may lead to the wrong placement of infringing goods. This direct data connection means that the customs inspection system and the National Intellectual Property Administration’s rights confirmation system have achieved ground-level synchronization, making the “Major Infringement Administrative Adjudication” a direct reference for customs law enforcement, greatly enhancing the deterrent effect of border enforcement.

[Overseas Advice]

(1) Enterprises going overseas should treat customs filing of intellectual property as a standard action for product exports. With the system integration, the filing review for compliant enterprises will be greatly accelerated. It is recommended that companies improve their rights information in advance in the “Intellectual Property Customs Protection Filing System” to avoid rushing to file documents only when shipments are made.

(2) If you discover that domestic manufacturers are counterfeiting your products and attempting to export them to your overseas target markets, you should actively initiate administrative rulings domestically. Once the case is won domestically, the ruling information will be shared with customs. Companies can use this to precisely intercept infringing competing products at ports, cutting off the export channels of domestic counterfeit goods at the source, and protecting their overseas market share and brand premium.

(3) Enterprises should assign dedicated personnel to regularly verify the real-time legal status of their patents and trademarks to ensure the data captured by customs systems is absolutely accurate, avoiding border rights protection issues caused by abnormal rights status (such as invalidation due to missed annual fees).

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Key Work Two: Strengthen investigation assistance

[Key Points of the Original Text]

When intellectual property management departments handle trademark or patent infringement cases involving import and export goods and request customs assistance, customs shall provide assistance. When customs investigates detained goods suspected of trademark or patent infringement and requests assistance from the intellectual property management department, the department shall provide assistance. For patent infringement cases involving professional technical matters, the department shall recommend technical investigators and other experts according to customs requirements; For registered trademark information and status that need to be verified, customs can do so through the National Intellectual Property Administration’s trademark registration certificate publicity system.

[Comment Analysis]

In intellectual property border enforcement, patent infringement determination carries extremely high professional barriers. Frontline customs personnel are mainly skilled in commodity classification and document review, and when faced with complex technologies such as chips, high-end medical devices, and precision manufacturing, it is often difficult to independently complete precise infringement comparisons. This professional misalignment easily leads to enforcement difficulties: if detained too easily, it may misjudge compliant enterprises; If released, infringing products may be missed. The introduction of the technical investigator mechanism aims to bridge this professional gap, upgrading customs inspections from “document and appearance identification” to “substantive technical feature comparison,” greatly improving enforcement accuracy.

[Overseas Advice]

(1) Overseas enterprises holding core technology patents should proactively provide a detailed “Technical Characteristic Comparison Report” when reporting infringing goods for export. Coordinate with customs to introduce technical investigators to transform complex technical disputes into clear patent infringement determinations, ensuring that infringing goods are effectively intercepted at the border.

(2) The technical investigator mechanism has bidirectional effect. Before exporting new products, companies must strictly implement FTO (Freedom to Implement) analysis to check for whether their patents fall within the scope of protection in China. Prevent competitors from using this mechanism to conduct reverse sniping at domestic ports, which could lead to compliant products being detained due to infringement disputes.

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Key Work Three: Strengthen business support

[Key Points of the Original Text]

When customs investigates goods suspected of infringing trademark or patent rights, it should fully refer to the infringement determination standards set by the National Intellectual Property Administration, as well as relevant administrative responses and administrative rulings issued by intellectual property management departments. When customs encounters more specialized and complex issues such as identifying the same type of goods, similar goods, identical trademarks, similar trademarks, or patent infringement, it may seek opinions from the intellectual property management department at the same level, which should respond promptly and issue professional opinions.

[Comment Analysis]

This provision grants domestic intellectual property administrative rulings cross-departmental authoritative effect. Chinese products often face malicious complaints from competitors when exhibiting or clearing customs overseas, and even use temporary local customs bans to seize products and force companies to pay hefty settlement fees. This clause establishes the “endorsement” status of domestic administrative opinions in customs enforcement, providing enterprises with an official basis for defense in international trade frictions.

[Overseas Advice]

(1) For core overseas products, enterprises can initiate administrative adjudication of patent infringement disputes in advance domestically. If a “non-infringement” determination is obtained, this document will serve as strong evidence to defend against malicious overseas accusations and to prove innocence to the customs of the target country.

(2) Translate and notarize documents such as favorable recognition and patent validity certificates issued by domestic administrative departments, and include them in overseas rights protection archives. When encountering sudden detention during overseas exhibitions or customs clearance, authoritative evidence can be quickly submitted to speed up customs clearance or terminate malicious investigations.

(3) When conducting patent cross-licensing or settlement negotiations with overseas competitors, favorable determinations issued by domestic official departments can effectively increase the company’s bargaining power and break the other party’s attempt to use patent litigation for commercial pressure.

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Key Task Four: Strengthen protection in key areas

[Key Points of the Original Text]

Intellectual property management departments encourage rights holders with well-known trademark confirmation records, collective trademarks/certification trademarks registered as geographical indications, and key industry enterprises such as photovoltaics to actively apply to customs for intellectual property filing. The General Administration of Customs will review relevant filing applications in accordance with the law. After the above trademarks and patents are filed with the General Administration of Customs, customs will strengthen protection based on national industrial policies and risk analysis results.

[Comment Analysis]

The document explicitly names “key industries such as photovoltaics,” reflecting the national willingness to protect globally competitive industries such as new energy and high-end manufacturing. When companies in these sectors go global, they not only face patent blockades in overseas markets but also suffer from counterfeit exports of low-end production capacity domestically. Domestic counterfeit goods are exported to the same target market at extremely low prices, seriously disrupting the pricing system and brand reputation of legitimate overseas companies. The key industry protection mechanism essentially uses border law enforcement to assist enterprises in clearing infringing capacity and maintaining overseas market share.

[Overseas Advice]

(1) Enterprises in key advantageous industries such as photovoltaics and new energy should comprehensively review core patents and well-known trademarks, actively apply to the General Administration of Customs for intellectual property registration, in order to obtain key monitoring and protection from customs based on national industrial policies.

(2) Enterprises should proactively monitor the export trends of domestic counterfeit manufacturers. Once infringing goods are discovered to be about to leave the country, they should immediately provide accurate logistics information (such as container number and destination port) to customs and cooperate with customs in implementing precise interception.

(3) By blocking the overseas channels for low-priced counterfeit products, legitimate companies can effectively maintain their pricing systems and high-end brand images in overseas markets, avoiding price competition.

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Key Task Five: Strengthen consultation and research

[Key Points of the Original Text]

Intellectual property management departments and customs, based on local realities, should conduct timely discussions on difficult trademark and patent cases, conduct joint research on major and difficult issues, promote unified enforcement standards, and improve cross-departmental law enforcement protection. Regularly conduct business exchanges, jointly strengthen frontier theoretical research and practical exploration of intellectual property protection in new fields and new business models, and promote the improvement of related policies. They exchanged the latest progress in technology empowerment and innovation models, jointly promoting the application of new technologies such as artificial intelligence and big data in intellectual property protection.

[Comment Analysis]

As new business models such as cross-border e-commerce and software algorithms expand in scale, intellectual property infringement is becoming more covert and digitalized. Traditional regulatory models relying on physical inspection struggle to effectively identify code infringement or digital copyright infringement. The two departments jointly promote AI and big data applications, signaling that future customs risk management will evolve from manual inspections to intelligent early warnings, automatically identifying high-risk infringement targets through data comparison.

[Overseas Advice]

(1) Digital overseas enterprises must complete preliminary scanning of underlying open-source code, copyright review, and domestic filing of algorithm patents to ensure that the software code and algorithm models of exported products do not pose infringement risks.

(2) Ensure that the actual technical parameters of export software and digital products are highly consistent with the filed intellectual property information, preventing risk warnings triggered by data deviations in future intelligent deployments.

(3) Closely track policy trends in AI and big data regulation by both departments, promptly adjust enterprises’ data export compliance and intellectual property strategies, and prevent dual compliance risks.

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Key Work Six: Strengthen talent cultivation and publicity

[Key Points of the Original Text]

Intellectual property management departments and customs exchange instructors, support professional training in foreign-related intellectual property protection, and strengthen talent team building. Intellectual property management departments and customs at all levels should strengthen publicity on intellectual property protection and may carry out joint publicity activities based on actual conditions to jointly raise awareness of intellectual property protection.

[Comment Analysis]

Border intellectual property protection involves not only legal application but also highly specialized practical procedures. Many legal teams of overseas companies are proficient in court litigation but lack practical experience in customs filing, guarantee detention, and counter-guarantee release, often unable to respond quickly when faced with sudden seizures. The two departments jointly conduct professional training, aiming to enhance enterprises’ foreign-related compliance and rights protection capabilities at the national level.

[Overseas Advice]

(1) Corporate legal or compliance officers should proactively participate in training and seminars organized by local customs and intellectual property bureaus, becoming familiar with frontline law enforcement logic and the boundaries of rights protection.

(2) Standardize customs intellectual property filing procedures, infringement report materials, guarantee release procedures, and legal contingency plans for counterclaims as standard operating procedures within enterprises.

(3) Management of overseas enterprises should incorporate border intellectual property compliance into their globalization strategies, allocate dedicated personnel and sufficient budgets, and enhance practical capabilities in responding to sudden border disputes.

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Key Work 7: Carry out evaluations and rewards and penalties

[Key Points of the Original Text]

The National Intellectual Property Administration and the General Administration of Customs regularly evaluate the effectiveness of intellectual property protection work and summarize and promote typical experiences and practices. Collectives and individuals with outstanding protection work will be publicly commended; Reminders and reminders will be given to those who perform poorly.

[Comment Analysis]

This mechanism establishes the long-term and institutionalized nature of cross-departmental collaboration. This means that joint protection between customs and the National Intellectual Property Administration has become a routine national strategy. For companies going global, this collaborative mechanism provides stable institutional expectations, giving them more reliable channels for administrative remedies when facing cross-border intellectual property disputes.

[Overseas Advice]

Overseas enterprises should firmly believe in relying on domestic administrative power to protect their rights. When encountering complex border intellectual property disputes, actively seek professional support through regular cross-departmental contact mechanisms, turning intellectual property protection into a core advantage for enterprises in global market competition.

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Conclusion

The release of the “Opinions on Strengthening Collaborative Protection of Intellectual Property” marks an important step in extending the domestic intellectual property protection system to the border. For overseas enterprises, understanding and applying policy provisions such as “information sharing,” “technical assistance,” and “key industry filing” not only effectively prevents counterfeit products from going global, but also allows them to gain substantial support from domestic administrative forces in the complex international trade environment. Making good use of this policy guidance will become an important guarantee for Chinese innovative enterprises to move forward steadily in global competition.

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