The party's 20 major reports emphasize that “strengthening the rule of law guarantees of intellectual property and creating a foundational system that supports comprehensive innovation” provides fundamental adherence to the rule of law in the current and future emerging areas. The report of the 2026 government report explicitly listed smart industries as one of the new and growing industries and future industries that nurtures growth, as a key move to take ownership of smart and robotic ecology, accelerate the development of new qualitative productivity and shape new dynamics. By the end of 2025, the country's total financing in the area of intelligence and robotics had exceeded 73,543 million yuan, and there had been 744 industrial financing incidents. The intelligent industry was accelerating its evolution from the laboratory scene of technological development to that of commercial applications of scale. The emergence of smart industries calls for institutional environments that are compatible with industrial development, stabilize market expectations and stimulate innovation. The rule of law of intellectual property rights, which provides a clear and stable definition and protection of intellectual innovations, is a solid guarantee that smart industries will achieve high-quality development。
New features of the smart industry calling for new changes in the intellectual property system
In his twenty-fifth collective study at the central political bureau of the ccp, general secretary xi stressed that “the modernization of the state system of governance and its capacity to govern intellectual property protection working relations, the development of high-quality relationships, the well-being of people, the opening up of the country to the outside world and the security of the state” provides a profound illustration of the contemporary dimensions of intellectual property protection and provides fundamental guidelines for following and acting on the development of intellectual property in the new stage of development. The rule of law is an essential foundation for the modernization of national governance systems and capacities. It plays a fundamental, predictable and long-term role. By giving innovators a clear vision of property rights, it provides a fundamental incentive for r & d inputs, secures investment returns, and regulates the competitive order, which is the cornerstone of the emergence of new industries。
At present, the development of the smart industry is characterized by three main features. The first is “soft and hard synergetic”, which is derived from the depth of algorithms, data and mechanical entities, and the blurring of technological results. The second is “self-evolving”, which refers to the ability of a smart system to learn on a continuous basis, its performance and behaviour that may change dynamically after deployment and the continuity of the innovation process. Third is “ecological openness”, which means that its research and development is highly dependent on global open-source collaboration and modular supply chains, with innovative activities in a distributed and networked manner. These characteristics expose traditional intellectual property rules based on clarity of object and static rights to unprecedented incompatibilities and lags in defining the ownership rights of “soft and hard integration” outcomes, stimulating continued investment in “self-evolving” systems, allocating benefits from multi-subject collaboration in “ecological openness”, and legal liability behind retroactive system behaviour. Therefore, advancing the intellectual property system is compatible with the new characteristics of the development of smart industries, breaking down the reality of inadequate incentives for innovation, poorly distributed interests and unclear liability for risk, and is of great theoretical and practical importance for our country to further transform the system into an industrial dynamic in future global industrial competition。
Realistic dilemmas in intellectual property protection for smart industries
First, the attribution of rights to integrate innovation is difficult to define. The technical nature of smart “soft and hard, system-integrated” results are presented in complex systems that combine algorithms, data and hardware depths. The protection model of traditional intellectual property law based on a clear client classification was challenged. It is difficult for regimes such as patents, copyrights, and business secrets to define clearly the boundaries of rights and attribution of “multiple” and “interactive emergence” of intelligence. This has led to a fundamental risk that enterprises, in their core technology configuration and cooperation, will have high power costs and unclear legal status, placing disputes at risk for subsequent market-based operations and advocacy。
Second is the difficulty of effectively protecting the technical value of continuous iterativeity. There is a profound contradiction between the rapid iterativeization of technology and the progressive modernization of the legal system. On the one hand, the long cycle of patent review authorizations and the fact that key smart technologies may have evolved over generations during this period are prone to “authorization or obsolescence” and undermine the incentive effectiveness of the patent system. The system, on the other hand, has a “continuing learning” capability, and the performance optimized after deployment is beyond what is fixed at the time of patent application and cannot be effectively covered by existing rights. In addition, major global jurisdictions differ on rules such as the protection of ai generators and the patentability of algorithms, and businesses face high global compliance costs and uncertainties that discourage long-term innovation。
Thirdly, it was difficult to determine precisely the legal liability behind systemic damage. In the industrial ecology of open-source collaboration and global supply chains, the development and production of a product involves a diverse and decentralized global body. The chain of responsibility is extremely long and blurred when the body of intelligence causes damage due to defects or autonomous decision-making failures. The traditional tort liability logic based on “clear producers” and “direct causality” is difficult to apply when damage may arise from open source codes from anonymous community contributions, hardware defects of secondary suppliers, inherent bias in underlying algorithms or systemic integration problems. Most of the exemptions from open-source licences add to the difficulty of accountability, creating “damaged, unaccountable” governance depressions that are not conducive to consumer protection and industrial health order。
Strengthening intellectual property innovation protection in smart industries
The first is to explore the establishment of integrated intellectual property protection and registration mechanisms that integrate innovative outcomes. In order to break the “soft and hard” dilemma of power, the study and piloting of the rules for the integrated identification of systemic innovations that converge in algorithms, data and hardware depths should be accelerated. A “integrated intellectual property” registration platform could be established at the national level to support enterprises in making corporate claims and declarations on complex technological systems. At the same time, the implicit licensing rules for intellectual property rights of those who clearly contribute to open-source ecosystems should be actively promoted, and tenure disputes in collaborative innovation should be reduced from the source, providing clear institutional expectations for joint industry research and development and cross-licensing。
The second is to build a dynamic “application-review-protection” system of rapid iterative adaptation technologies. To effectively protect the evolving technical value, the responsiveness of the system needs to be significantly enhanced. First, there should be a fast-track patent review, centralized review and enforcement of rights to register green corridors, significantly reducing the authorization cycle for core technologies. Second, to accelerate the refinement of the protection of the “continuing learning” system, to explore the establishment of a critical version of the algorithm filing system and to study the incorporation of model parameters assessed for security and compliance into commercial secrets or data property protection. Thirdly, to proactively strengthen international dialogue and promote greater global consensus on key rules, such as the protection of ai generators and the patentability of algorithms, to reduce the cost of cross-border compliance by enterprises。
Thirdly, mechanisms for the allocation of responsibilities and the socialization of risks based on the principle of “multiple governance”. To solve the dilemma of ecological development, the retroactive principles and rules of distribution of product safety liability must be legally defined. First, the legal responsibilities of the parties in terms of design, manufacture, integration, transport, etc. Should be reasonably configured, depending on the degree of control over the risks and the extent of the benefits of each of the components. Second, a co-management system for the security risks of open-source components must be built, a list of software materials for key products mandatory and a platform for coordinated disclosure of open-source gaps at the national level established. Thirdly, efforts should be directed towards the development of new types of insurance products, such as smart product and algorithm liability insurance, to effectively decentralize and transfer risks inherent in industrial innovation through market-based mechanisms and to establish safety nets for the sound development of the whole industrial chain。
(marge, guan)
