On November 25, 2025, China’s National Intellectual Property Administration announced a joint rectification campaign in conjunction with the Ministry of Public Security and State Administration for Market Regulation. The campaign will last three months and “seriously illegal agencies and practitioners will be investigated and punished strictly according to law, ordered to rectify irregular practices, and typical cases of illegal agency practices will be publicly exposed to quickly create a deterrent effect.”
The campaign will include:
a strong crackdown… against prominent illegal activities such as falsifying patent applicant information, fabricating patent applications, acting as an agent for a large number of abnormal patent applications, falsification, acting as an agent for malicious trademark applications, unqualified patent agents, and soliciting agency business through improper means. Enforcement efforts will be significantly strengthened, and those constituting crimes will be transferred to public security organs for legal prosecution. Second, a concentrated rectification of irregular professional practices will be carried out. Agencies and practitioners will be organized to conduct comprehensive self-inspection and rectification, focusing on rectifying the renting or lending of agency qualifications and illegal business solicitation on internet platforms, and accelerating the cleanup of agencies that obtained agency qualifications through fraudulent means or no longer meet the conditions for practicing law…
The goal of the campaign is
to promote integrity, compliance, and responsible practice among agencies and practitioners, establish a long-term mechanism, significantly improve the order of the intellectual property agency industry, and enhance the professional responsibility and sense of honor of practitioners, thereby accelerating the high-quality development of the agency industry.
The full text is available here (Chinese only).
