The State Council has officially released the "15th Five-Year Plan for Intellectual Property Protection and Utilization," which sets targets, key tasks, and special projects for IP work during the 2026-2030 period. For the first time, the plan includes the improvement of rules for protecting algorithms and AI-generated content in a national-level special plan. It also proposes exploring the establishment of data intellectual property protection rules, strengthening research on open-source IP protocol rules, and supporting the development of domestic open-source communities.

The plan sets a goal for 2030: China's overall IP strength and international competitiveness will be further enhanced, with stronger IP protection, more prominent market value of IP, better public IP services, a more efficient comprehensive IP management system, and deeper international cooperation, marking decisive progress in building a strong IP nation. Looking ahead to 2035, China's comprehensive IP competitiveness is expected to rank among the world's top, with a world-class, Chinese-style IP power basically established.

Compared to the "14th Five-Year Plan," the new plan introduces new expressions such as "increasing the supply of IP that promotes the development of new quality productive forces" and "accelerating the cultivation and development of the IP factor market." In emerging fields, the plan specifies improving IP protection systems and specific field protection rules to serve key core technology breakthroughs and empower industrial innovation.

"The clearest signal from the plan is that the policy role of IP has changed," said Xiao Youdan, a researcher at the Institutes of Science and Development, Chinese Academy of Sciences, who has long studied IP. He noted that in the past, IP discussions focused more on "protecting innovation results." While the plan still emphasizes protection, its focus is no longer solely on the intensity of protection. Instead, it places IP within the context of technological innovation, industrial development, market pricing, and international competition, showing greater concern for whether these rights can generate market value.

Xiao further pointed out that the logic for evaluating IP work is also shifting. Previously, the focus was on "how many rights" existed, such as the number of patent applications, grants, and trademark registrations. The new plan, however, is more concerned with whether these rights can be transformed into products, support industrial added value, facilitate financing, enable licensing transactions, and participate in international competition. This shift will guide local governments, tech companies, and research institutions to make corresponding changes.

Data shows that as of the end of June, China held 2.36 million high-value invention patents, with the number of high-value invention patents per 10,000 people rising to 16.8. Among these, patents in new-generation information technology fields like AI, internet, cloud computing, and big data account for 16.5% of the total effective patents. This data was disclosed by the National Intellectual Property Administration at a recent press conference.

However, Xiao also noted that advancing rules in emerging fields is highly challenging. Using AI as an example, the difficulty lies in the boundaries of rights for AI-generated content—whether the generated content is protected, who owns the rights, how to determine the relationship between training data and output results, and how to allocate responsibility among platforms, model developers, and users, all of which can spark controversy. The challenge in building open-source-related rules is balancing open innovation with commercial compliance. He believes a more realistic path is to first form operable rules in key areas, gradually advancing through cases, pilot programs, industry standards, and international negotiations.