Tao Kaiyuan Attended the 2026 Annual Meeting of the China Law Society Intellectual Property Law Research Association

WISECODE Take

Many business owners often view mainland Chinese official academic annual meetings as mere policy propaganda, thereby overlooking the judicial trial trends revealed within. At the "Intellectual Property Law Research Association Annual Meeting" on September 12, 2026, Tao Kaiyuan, Vice President of the Supreme People's Court, positioned this year as the opening year of the "15th Five-Year Plan" and emphasized building a new trial system to support high-quality development. This indicates that mainland authorities are accelerating the adjustment of judicial trial standards, particularly for technical trials in digital technology and foreign-related rule of law. This poses a direct challenge of tightening litigation standards for Taiwanese enterprises with R&D centers or patent layouts in mainland China, while purely domestic-demand-oriented enterprises remain unaffected. Facing this change, Zhidian's "Patent Layout Health Check" service can assist enterprises in reviewing their patent portfolios in mainland China to avoid being passive in future litigation due to standard shifts. To this end, the author proposes two recommendations. First, review patents in mainland China to assess whether they comply with the data security standards emphasized by China in recent years. Second, re-evaluate dispute jurisdiction clauses in foreign-related contracts and pre-agree on more secure arbitration institutions. At the turning point where mainland trial standards shift toward "quality over quantity," patent quality will directly determine the survival rate of enterprises in cross-strait market competition.