China’s National Intellectual Property Administration, together with the Ministry of Public Security and the State Administration for Market Regulation, has rolled out an action plan to make 2026 a nationwide “Year of Rectification and Standardization” for the intellectual property agency industry. The plan goes beyond another short enforcement push: it targets bad-faith patent and trademark filings, unlicensed practice, certificate lending, falsified materials, improper client solicitation, and weak gatekeeping at the approval and recordal stages, while also tying in credit-based and data-driven supervision.
The practical message is that agency regulation in China is becoming more continuous and more granular. Firms that still rely on volume-driven filing, loose internal controls, aggressive marketing language, or questionable staffing arrangements may find that those weaknesses are easier to detect and harder to explain away. For businesses using external agents, cheaper is no longer safer by default; the quality of compliance, signature responsibility, and recordal hygiene now matters much more than before.
