China court: taking source code infringes trade secrets; CNIPA publishes its 2026–2030 examination plan; ZTE and Samsung drop their UPC suits

On 5 November the IP Court of China's Supreme People's Court published the key holding of case (2023) Zui Gao Fa Zhi Min Zhong No. 539: an operations employee with access to a game's source code who downloaded and took it before resigning, his former manager and the manager's new company jointly infringed trade secrets and must pay CNY 500,000 in damages and CNY 398,760 in costs.

China's Supreme People's Court: an employee entitled to access source code still infringes by taking it; three defendants jointly liable for about CNY 900,000

In case (2023) Zui Gao Fa Zhi Min Zhong No. 539, a Beijing game company claimed the source code of its strategy game World of Dragons as a trade secret. An employee responsible for operating the technical platform downloaded the code in stages during the month or so before he gave notice, and stored it on a computer the company had not issued. The money for that computer came from the former business lead, who had already left and set up a competing company, and the invoice named the new company as buyer. Both men had signed confidentiality, non-compete and IP agreements. On 28 December 2022 the first-instance court dismissed all of the company's claims: the employee was entitled to access the code, and the evidence showed only that he obtained it, not that he disclosed or used it.

On 11 September 2024 the Supreme People's Court set that judgment aside. Being entitled to access a trade secret does not make the way it was obtained, or what was done with it afterwards, legitimate; the question is whether the intent, method and later conduct caused or could cause the owner to lose effective control of the secret. The company had never allowed copying to personal devices or taking the code home, and the employee deleted operation logs and altered jump-server login records. The court found that he obtained the code by theft and breached his duty of confidentiality, that the former lead incited, induced and assisted him, and that the new company both directed the conduct and benefited from it. All three must stop disclosing and using the code until it becomes public, sign a confidentiality undertaking within 30 days, and jointly pay CNY 500,000 in damages and CNY 398,760 in reasonable costs; continued use carries a penalty of CNY 50,000 a day.

China's National Intellectual Property Administration publishes its 2026–2030 examination plan: AI inventorship and AI-use declarations under study, and deceptive trademarks to be invalidated ex officio

CNIPA published its 15th Five-Year Plan for patent and trademark examination on 3 November. The notice is dated 19 October, covers 2026 to 2030, and the public version is marked as abridged. The first of its seven projects, on examination rules for emerging fields, names three questions for study: how to define the person skilled in the art and the scope of prior art for AI-assisted inventions; who the inventor is, and whether a patent can be granted, for AI-generated inventions; and whether applicants should declare their use of AI. The findings will feed into revisions of the Patent Examination Guidelines and the trial Guidelines for AI-related invention applications. The same project covers examination policy for standard-essential patents and design protection in virtual and augmented reality.

The trademark part assumes the amended Trademark Law is in force and the implementing regulations are revised. It plans examination standards for new types of mark and wider use of the intent-to-use undertaking for applications. Registered marks that are deceptive are to be invalidated ex officio, and the provision on revoking marks used in a misleading way is to be enforced. For bad-faith filings, CNIPA plans to look through to the real applicant, to monitor agencies that knowingly file bad-faith applications through a list-based system, and to use company registration data to identify bad-faith applicants. Most items are worded as study, exploration or improvement; concrete rules will come only with revised guidelines, regulations or guidance.

ZTE and Samsung withdraw their UPC Mannheim suits and Samsung's 20% fee refund is refused; Dai Nippon Printing wins a German and French injunction, and Enanta's patent is held invalid

On 6 November the Mannheim Local Division of the Unified Patent Court (UPC) allowed ZTE and Samsung Electronics to withdraw their suits against each other under Rule 265 of the Rules of Procedure. ZTE had sued Samsung Electronics and seven European subsidiaries on EP 3 577 874 (UPC_CFI_847/2024, value EUR 8 million), and Samsung had sued seven ZTE companies on EP 4 096 288 (UPC_CFI_188/2025, EUR 4 million); the revocation counterclaims were withdrawn too, and no party asked for a costs decision. Samsung's request for a 20% refund of court fees was refused: it applied to withdraw after 1 January 2026 and after the written procedure had closed, so the new Rule 370.9 applied, and it did not argue that the conditions of Rule 370.9(c) were met. The decisions do not say whether the parties agreed a licence.

On 5 November the UPC Düsseldorf Local Division held that Zapp's "Zapp SuperClean INVAR 36" metal foil literally falls within claim 1 of Dai Nippon Printing's EP 3 805 415, which protects an iron-nickel alloy sheet used to make vapour-deposition masks for OLED displays. It dismissed the revocation counterclaim and banned the products in Germany and France, with a penalty of at least EUR 10,000 a day, ordered recall, destruction and accounts, and found the Zapp companies jointly liable for infringement since 30 November 2022. Zapp's prior-use defence failed: samples were taken without a neutral witness, delivery records did not match, and two laboratories' results differed by up to 2.6 times. Separately, Enanta disclosed in an 8-K filed with the US SEC on 29 October that the UPC had held its EP 4 051 265 invalid, so its 18-country infringement action over Pfizer's Paxlovid failed; the full decision has not been obtained.

The Delhi High Court returns 17 IP complaints in a 246-page judgment: an accessible website, investigator test purchases and naming a platform as defendant do not create Delhi jurisdiction

On 3 November the Delhi High Court gave a common judgment in ABD Maestro v Great Galleon (CS(COMM) 987/2026) and 16 connected cases. It held that none of the 17 IP suits fell within Delhi's territorial jurisdiction and returned the plaints under Order VII Rule 10 of the Code of Civil Procedure for filing in the proper court. In the lead case a Mumbai-based plaintiff said an Indore company copied the yellow-and-black trade dress of its "YELLO" vodka with "V21", but the defendant's product was marked for sale only in Madhya Pradesh and its website had completed no transaction with anyone in Delhi. The judgment decides jurisdiction only; infringement is left to the proper court.

The court set out several rules. For online infringement the plaintiff must show the defendant purposefully targeted the Delhi market and completed a transaction with someone in Delhi, although this can be relaxed where the plaintiff cannot sue at its own place of business and the defendant has no place of business in India. Test purchases arranged through investigators are in principle manufactured jurisdiction and are generally disregarded, unless the plaintiff could not sue elsewhere without them or the defendant already supplied retailers or distributors in Delhi. Naming a Delhi-based e-commerce platform, domain registrar or web host as a formal defendant does not create jurisdiction, and neither do social media traffic from Delhi or a "principal place of business" entry in a GST registration. A plaintiff whose own principal office is in Delhi can still sue there under section 134(2) of the Trade Marks Act or section 62(2) of the Copyright Act.

The UK CMA opens a case on Meta's business terms over using publishers' content to build AI; the 2026 International Copyright Forum opens in Dunhuang

On 30 October the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) opened an investigation under Chapter II of the Competition Act 1998 into whether Meta's business terms abuse a dominant position. The CMA is concerned that the terms could let Meta collect content from the websites of news publishers and other businesses to develop products including AI features, without those businesses having a choice over whether or how it is used. Meta had planned to change its terms on 30 October, postponed this to 20 November after contact with the CMA, and on 28 October paused the rollout to consult industry groups first. The CMA stresses it has not found that Meta broke the law; its case page gives October 2026 to January 2027 as an estimated initial evidence-gathering stage. The case uses ordinary competition law: Meta has not been designated with strategic market status.

The 2026 International Copyright Forum, organised by China's National Copyright Administration and the World Intellectual Property Organization, opened in Dunhuang, Gansu, on 2 November under the theme "Copyright and creative industries in the digital and intelligent era: protecting cultural heritage, empowering innovation and creation". More than 400 people from over 40 countries attended, and WIPO Director General Daren Tang spoke at the opening. Participants called for a balance between technological development and creators' rights; the forum released a set of "copyright + folk art + tourism" case projects and the "2026 China Copyright Good Stories", and official reports did not list the selected cases.

The European Patent Office: renewal fees already paid on a parent must be paid again on a divisional, and Form 2300 may become mandatory for oppositions

The EPO Legal Board of Appeal held in J 0002/26 (issued 3 November, published 6 November) that renewal fees which had fallen due on the parent before a divisional is filed must be paid again for the divisional, even if the parent paid them; they can be paid within four months of filing without a surcharge. On 2 November the EPO disclosed a proposal that oppositions must be filed on Form 2300 and that cited patent documents available to the EPO need only their publication number; it still needs the Administrative Council and would apply from 1 October 2027. On 4 November the EPO renamed the "Patent office" and "Publication type" fields of Form 2300 to "Country code" and "Kind code", and MyEPO 1.31.0, released on 2 November, lets users update opposition file references directly.

The UK Intellectual Property Office's patent filing fault and eight-hour outage on 7 November, and three US Federal Circuit patent rulings

The UKIPO said on 3 November that some users' patent filings stuck at "Your documents are being prepared for submission", and patent filing was down from 9:00 to 17:00 UK time on 7 November, with no deadline extension announced. The UKIPO guidance on its new patent service, updated on 6 November, says that if an agent does not search for and select its own firm as representative, the patent will not appear in the firm's account and the filing receipt is delayed, and that patent renewal fees must be paid online through an IP account. A design costs appeal decision published by the UKIPO on 2 November (BL O/0958/26) held that submissions in one case do not automatically apply to other files. The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on 30 October affirmed non-infringement in Google v Sonos (one speaker decrypting and forwarding content is not "all devices" using the private key) and the same day vacated a USD 9,151,133 fee award to Elysium; on 5 November, in a precedential ruling, it upheld PTAB decisions keeping some claims of three DDC VR viewer patents, relying on objective evidence including Google's copying of the product and its engineers' emails.

The World Intellectual Property Organization lowers Syria's Madrid fee to CHF 199 per class on an exchange-rate recalculation, the EUIPO SME Fund reopens, and the CCPIT index ranks China sixth

WIPO's Madrid notice No. 44/2026 of 5 November: from 5 December the individual fee for designating Syria falls from CHF 215 to CHF 199 per class after an exchange-rate recalculation; for international applications the date of receipt by the office of origin counts. The EUIPO SME Fund reopened Voucher 1 (IP Scan) and Voucher 2 (trade marks and designs) on 5 November; the 2026 round runs until 4 December and is open only to SMEs established in the EU or Ukraine. Korea's Ministry of Intellectual Property published a 46-page guide to accelerated examination on 2 November, with a fee of KRW 200,000 per patent, and warns that fake photos or documents made with generative AI will lead to correction orders or refusal. IP Australia updated its patent manual on 2 November to clarify that only the parent's applicant, or a person entitled under section 113, may file a divisional. China's delegation proposed at the 38th session of WIPO's Standing Committee on the Law of Patents (2–6 November) an exchange of national practice on IP in outer space. The China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT) released its Global IP Protection Index Report (2025) on 30 October: China scored 81.75 and rose to sixth, entering the top tier for the first time.

01Make "without permission" provable when code leaves the office

Ban copying code to personal devices or taking it off site in writing, keep complete access, download and login logs, and check them around resignations; if records have been deleted or altered, secure the evidence at once.

02Start keeping the records China's examination plan points to

Where AI is used in research, record each human inventor's contribution and how AI was used; keep trademark filings in line with business needs, keep evidence of intent to use and actual use, and check an agency's track record.

03Choose the right court before suing in India

Base the choice of court on evidence of where the defendant does business, where goods are sold and where transactions were completed; secure proof of supply to local distributors and retailers early, rather than relying on website access, test purchases or platform defendants.

04Budget for the costs in European patent procedure

When filing a European divisional, budget for renewal fees already due on the parent and the four-month payment window; check refund timing under the new rules when withdrawing at the UPC; regular opponents can switch templates to Form 2300 now.