Guide to Using Contracts to Protect Your Intellectual Property Rights in China

Tailoring contracts to suit your intellectual property rights (IPR) is an important way to ensure that your company’s specific intellectual property (IP) assets are adequately protected. Contracts involving the protection of IP can be divided into four main categories: Technology development, transfer, consultancy and service contracts.Using the right provisions and contracts for your specific IPR is key to protecting them. It is also essential to include provisions to protect confidential information and trade secrets in contracts with third parties. In China, ‘trade secret’ is defined as “any non-public technical or business information with commercial value that is guarded by confidentiality measures”.