# China Once Stole Foreign Ideas. Now It Wants To Protect Its Own
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 16:22:01 2026-02-17
China's courts are now handling more than 550,000 intellectual-property cases a year -- making it the world's most litigious country for IP disputes -- as the nation's own companies, once notorious for copying foreign designs and technology, find themselves on the defensive against a domestic counterfeiting epidemic fueled by excess factory capacity.
The problem runs from knockoff "Lafufu" plush toys (cheap copies of Pop Mart's wildly popular Labubu dolls, which prompted a nationwide crackdown and a Shanghai police bust of a $1.7 million stash in July) to copied motorcycles and solar panels. Judges in Shanghai, the preferred venue for IP litigation, are working through cases at a rate of roughly one per day, and it still takes three months for a case to land on a court's docket.
Chinese companies are also increasingly clashing abroad: patent-related cases involving Chinese businesses in America surged 56% in 2023, according to data from GEN, a Chinese law firm. Luckin Coffee and Trina Solar have both filed suits against foreign-based copycats.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/26/02/17/1550222/china-once-stole-foreign-ideas-now-it-wants-to-protect-its-own?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 16:22:01 2026-02-17
China's courts are now handling more than 550,000 intellectual-property cases a year -- making it the world's most litigious country for IP disputes -- as the nation's own companies, once notorious for copying foreign designs and technology, find themselves on the defensive against a domestic counterfeiting epidemic fueled by excess factory capacity.
The problem runs from knockoff "Lafufu" plush toys (cheap copies of Pop Mart's wildly popular Labubu dolls, which prompted a nationwide crackdown and a Shanghai police bust of a $1.7 million stash in July) to copied motorcycles and solar panels. Judges in Shanghai, the preferred venue for IP litigation, are working through cases at a rate of roughly one per day, and it still takes three months for a case to land on a court's docket.
Chinese companies are also increasingly clashing abroad: patent-related cases involving Chinese businesses in America surged 56% in 2023, according to data from GEN, a Chinese law firm. Luckin Coffee and Trina Solar have both filed suits against foreign-based copycats.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/26/02/17/1550222/china-once-stole-foreign-ideas-now-it-wants-to-protect-its-own?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.