Protecting intellectual property is protecting innovation. This is the slogan immediately visible upon entering the Zhangjiang District Procuratorate in Pudong New Area.
As the country's first grassroots dispatched procuratorate to exercise integrated criminal, civil, administrative, and public interest litigation functions in intellectual property, the institution has spent more than a decade exploring a Pudong model for comprehensive judicial protection of intellectual property rights.
From establishing benchmarks through a series of first cases, including the nation's first trade secret infringement case in the AI chip sector, to setting up a service workstation in Zhangjiang Science City for face-to-face communication with enterprises, and conducting intellectual property risk checkups to help companies expand overseas steadily, the Zhangjiang District Procuratorate in Pudong New Area has consistently honored its commitments through concrete actions.
At the Pudong New Area Enterprise Going Global Comprehensive Service Center, the head of an overseas-expanding tech company received the Guidelines on Risks and Recommendations for Using Artificial Intelligence in the Intellectual Property Field from a prosecutor of the Pudong New Area Procuratorate and immediately stated they would take it back for all staff to study.
This risk guideline is just a microcosm of our comprehensive performance of duties, and our confidence comes from our mature intellectual property comprehensive protection work system, said a person in charge of the Zhangjiang District Procuratorate in Pudong New Area.
In November 2020, the Supreme People's Procuratorate established an intellectual property procuratorial office, and various regions successively set up pilot programs for the centralized and unified exercise of intellectual property procuratorial functions. The Pudong New Area Procuratorate was one of eight pilot units in Shanghai, and in February 2021, its intellectual property procuratorial office was officially inaugurated.
One year later, the Zhangjiang Procuratorate became the country's first grassroots dispatched procuratorate to exercise integrated criminal, civil, administrative, and public interest litigation functions in intellectual property, embarking on the exploration of a Pudong model for comprehensive judicial protection of intellectual property rights.
With the new functional layout, a group of pioneers willing to blaze new trails was urgently needed. Li Jie was transferred to the founding team of the Zhangjiang Procuratorate, becoming a founding veteran of this team.
When I first took up intellectual property procuratorial work, I often heard a sentiment that China's intellectual property protection started relatively late. Today, through performing our duties in accordance with the law and equally protecting all types of market entities, we have won recognition, Li Jie said frankly.
In 2022, a Class III medical device called absorbable hemostatic gauze from a multinational medical group was infringed upon. The product had a long research and development cycle and high investment costs. At the time, China had no relevant product identification standards in this field, and case handling reached an impasse.
The prosecuting prosecutor visited clinical experts and worked with the procuratorial technical team to conduct comparative experiments, verifying the facts of infringement. Afterward, the Zhangjiang Procuratorate not only completed criminal accountability but also eliminated medical safety hazards through public interest litigation, helping the rights holder achieve rights protection.
After the case concluded, the Zhangjiang Procuratorate continued to follow up on intellectual property protection needs in the biomedical industry. In September this year, the 2026 Zhangjiang Pharm Valley Conference and Shanghai International Biomedical Industry Week were held in Zhangjiang Science City.
At the conference, the Pudong New Area Procuratorate, the Pudong New Area Intellectual Property Office, and the Shanghai International Intellectual Property College of Tongji University jointly released eight measures for serving and safeguarding the healthy development of the biomedical industry in Pudong New Area, along with typical cases and examples, successfully transforming individual case handling experience into industry governance models recommended to thousands of biomedical enterprises.
A series of guidelines help overseas-expanding enterprises go steady and far. In recent years, the Zhangjiang District Procuratorate in Pudong New Area has consistently kept pace with the pulse of innovative development, continuously responding to innovation needs in different fields and providing more precise and comprehensive legal safeguards for the development of new quality productive forces.
Shifting from single case handling to source governance is an inevitable requirement for procuratorial organs to serve the development of new quality productive forces. In January 2026, a procuratorial service workstation was established in Zhangjiang Science City, becoming a hub for deep integration of judicial protection into the industrial chain.
The workstation not only offers legal consulting services, preliminary diagnosis of case leads, legal publicity and lectures, risk education and prevention, and frontier theoretical research but also serves as a direct express channel for procuratorate-enterprise interaction.
We want to prove a concept through practice: putting the legal shield into the hands of enterprises so that protection stays ahead of risks, said a person in charge of the Zhangjiang District Procuratorate in Pudong New Area.
At the same time, as more and more enterprises go global from Pudong to participate in international competition, intellectual property protection has naturally extended to overseas markets, and legal needs such as trade secret protection and cross-border infringement risk prevention have become increasingly urgent.
How to help enterprises safeguard innovation achievements and respond to overseas intellectual property risks during their going-global process has become a new topic that procuratorial organs must answer. In April 2025, the Pudong New Area Procuratorate released the Chinese-English bilingual White Paper on Foreign-Related Intellectual Property Procuratorial Protection Work of the Pudong Procuratorate 2022-2024 and typical cases at the Artificial Intelligence Island in Zhangjiang Science City.
The intellectual property prosecutors of the procuratorate simultaneously released the Chinese-English bilingual Guidelines on Criminal Risk Prevention for Overseas Intellectual Property and the Chinese-English bilingual Guidelines on Intellectual Property Protection for Three Leading Industries. On the same day, the Zhangjiang Procuratorate Chinese-English website was officially launched.
It is reported that the Chinese-English bilingual Guidelines on Criminal Risk Prevention for Overseas Intellectual Property briefly summarizes the criminal legal provisions and criminal procedures related to intellectual property in China's major trading countries and regions, helping enterprises identify potential risks in global operations, clarifying the definition standards and enforcement priorities for intellectual property crimes in different judicial jurisdictions, and strengthening the ability of overseas-expanding enterprises to respond to foreign-related intellectual property criminal risks.
At the same time, the Zhangjiang Procuratorate Chinese-English website also features an intellectual property legal risk test to help enterprises assess risks with one click. In April 2026, the head of a new energy vehicle research and development and manufacturing enterprise received a social governance procuratorial recommendation from a prosecutor of the Zhangjiang Procuratorate.
This procuratorial recommendation came at exactly the right time and helped us identify weak links in our corporate management and operations, the person said. This procuratorial recommendation originated from the procuratorate's case handling practice in the field of foreign-related trade secret protection.
After the case concluded, prosecutors delved into the common shortcomings in corporate management behind the case, visited the enterprise, and pushed it to improve its internal confidentiality control system. Facing the risk of trade secret theft during enterprises' overseas expansion, the Pudong New Area Procuratorate relied on Shanghai's first intellectual property procuratorial comprehensive duty performance practice base to continuously explore a vertical and horizontal three-dimensional trade secret protection mechanism and transform risk points identified during case handling into a navigation map for enterprises.
The procuratorate also jointly released the Tips on Legal Risk Prevention for Enterprise Employees Regarding Trade Secrets and the Enterprise Intellectual Property Legal Protection Guideline Manual with the Third Branch of the Shanghai People's Procuratorate, and focusing on the key technology protection needs of Shanghai's three leading industries, including integrated circuits, biomedicine, and artificial intelligence, repeatedly visited enterprises to conduct special training on trade secrets.
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