In intellectual-property litigation, conduct preservation can directly determine whether rights receive effective protection and whether the eventual judgment can be carried out in practice. It is particularly important where infringing conduct is continuing or about to occur, or where a defendant attempts to avoid liability by maliciously deregistering a company or changing its legal representative. Timely use of the conduct-preservation procedure can prevent loss of rights and expansion of harm. In recent years, conduct preservation has also been used increasingly in anti-suit injunctions involving standard-essential patents (SEPs), further strengthening its role in intellectual-property protection. Drawing on practical experience, this article analyses the principal settings in which conduct preservation is used and the standards courts apply. It addresses four subjects: injunctions during pending litigation; pre-litigation injunctions; orders prohibiting enterprise deregistration or a change of legal representative where those steps may be used to evade an adverse judgment; and SEP anti-suit injunctions.
I. Injunctions during litigation The standards are principally found in Article 103 of the Civil Procedure Law and Article 7 of the Supreme People's Court provisions on conduct preservation in intellectual-property disputes. Article 103 allows a court, on application or where necessary on its own initiative, to preserve property, order a specified act or prohibit an act where conduct by a party or other circumstances may make a judgment difficult to enforce or cause other harm. Article 7 requires comprehensive consideration of whether the request has a factual and legal basis and the asserted right is stable; whether refusal would cause irreparable harm or make the judgment difficult to enforce; whether the applicant's harm from refusal exceeds the respondent's harm from an order; whether public interests would be harmed; and other relevant factors. Unlike pre-litigation relief, an injunction during litigation does not require urgency as an indispensable element. It can also operate preventively. The first requirement is a factual and legal basis. The right must be sufficiently stable and the accused conduct must have a comparatively high likelihood of being found infringing, in substance an assessment of probability of success. The applicant should prove a stable rights foundation and provide evidence supporting a preliminary infringement finding. In the 2023 Hangzhou unfair-competition case identified as (2023) Zhe 01 Min Chu No. 1411, the court found protectable competitive interests and a high likelihood that the respondent's conduct violated good faith and business ethics. By contrast, in the Supreme People's Court's 2024 Zui Gao Fa Zhi Min Fu No. 1 matter, although the rights basis was relatively stable, the factual foundation for infringement was insufficiently clear at the preservation stage. The second requirement concerns irreparable harm or difficulty enforcing the judgment. IP rights may be time-sensitive and market-sensitive, so continued infringement may cause lost market share, reputational harm, disclosure of technical secrets or other loss that later relief cannot reverse. Article 10 lists typical cases, including irreparable injury to goodwill or personal rights, conduct that will become difficult to control and significantly increase harm, a marked reduction in market share, and other irreparable harm. In the Hangzhou case, the court considered the accused conduct capable of damaging competitive advantage, misleading internet users and harming competitive order and public interests. In the 2024 Supreme People's Court patent case, by contrast, reduced sales were primarily economic losses compensable in money and through enforcement, and the respondent offered counter-security; the Court therefore found the irreparable-harm threshold unmet. The third requirement is balance of harms. Courts compare the likely injury to the applicant if relief is denied with the injury to the respondent if relief is granted, considering scope, duration, business effect and the parties' positions. In the Hangzhou Alipay/Shuaquantu dispute, the scale and speed of internet dissemination made the applicant's potential harm difficult to control, while the order only restrained specified Alipay-related content rather than operation of the entire app, and security had been provided. The fourth factor is public interest. Courts consider both whether an injunction would harm public interests and whether refusing it would do so. In the Hangzhou case, preservation itself was not shown to harm the public, whereas failure to restrain conduct likely contrary to good faith and fair competition could damage market order and consumers. The fifth point is the preventive function. Conduct preservation may intervene before foreseeable harm occurs or expands. In the Hangzhou case, the accused app had already been removed from an app platform, but the court still granted relief because relisting and restoring the accused function would be technically easy. The order therefore prevented both continuation and resumption of the conduct before the substantive judgment became effective.
II. Pre-litigation injunctions Article 104 of the Civil Procedure Law provides that an interested party facing an urgent situation in which failure to apply immediately would cause irreparable harm may seek preservation before filing litigation or arbitration, and must provide security. The Supreme People's Court's 2024 Zui Gao Fa Zhi Min Fu No. 1 decision considered both an “urgent situation” and the same necessity and balancing factors used for injunctions during litigation. The additional defining requirement is urgency. The IP conduct-preservation provisions identify urgent situations such as imminent unlawful disclosure of trade secrets; imminent infringement of publication, privacy or other personal rights; imminent unlawful disposal of disputed IP; infringement occurring or about to occur at a time-sensitive exhibition; and infringement of a time-sensitive popular programme. The applicant must show that without prompt relief its lawful rights will suffer irreversible and irreparable harm. A Winter Olympics case involving CCTV International and Zhuhai Chuanghaixin Network Technology illustrates the point: because the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics had exceptional public attention, extreme time sensitivity and high economic value, infringement during the event risked irreparable harm to competitive advantage and economic interests, and preservation was granted. Pre-litigation relief may also address imminent future infringement. In the case between CCTV International Network Co., Ltd. and Shanghai Yuebao Information Technology Co., Ltd., although unauthorised streaming of a particular World Cup match would cease when that match ended, the respondents' established method made repetition during later matches likely. The applicant's rights remained at risk, so the court issued preservation against the anticipated conduct.
III. Orders prohibiting enterprise deregistration or change of legal representative Conduct-preservation measures are not limited to restraining the infringement itself. Courts may prohibit enterprise deregistration or a change of legal representative where those steps threaten the effectiveness of the proceedings or the final judgment. The legal basis for an application during litigation is Article 103 of the Civil Procedure Law. The standards in Article 7 of the IP conduct-preservation provisions can also guide civil conduct preservation more generally. The key considerations are probability of success, necessity, proportionality and public interest. Urgency is not mandatory for an application made during pending litigation, but where the situation is urgent Article 103 requires a ruling within 48 hours after receipt. These measures have been applied in practice. In (2021) E 0105 Min Chu No. 6890-1, the court prohibited Hubei Qurong International Trade Co., Ltd. from changing its legal representative or carrying out deregistration, preventing changes in corporate status from frustrating litigation responsibility.
IV. Anti-suit injunctions involving standard-essential patents A standard-essential patent is one that must be practised to implement a technical standard. Because SEP holders control licences necessary for market entry once the standard is widely adopted, standard-setting organisations commonly require licensing on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms. Disagreement over a reasonable royalty can lead to parallel litigation in multiple jurisdictions. Anti-suit injunctions may restrain a party from commencing or continuing parallel proceedings elsewhere or from enforcing a foreign judgment, and can materially affect bargaining positions in later royalty negotiations. China's development of SEP anti-suit relief is marked by the 2020 Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. v. Conversant Wireless Licensing Co., Ltd. case, in which the Supreme People's Court issued China's first cross-border anti-suit injunction in the IP field. Chinese courts subsequently used similar measures in disputes including Xiaomi v. InterDigital, ZTE v. Conversant, Samsung v. Ericsson and OPPO v. Sharp. The legal basis lies in Article 103 and the IP conduct-preservation provisions. Huawei v. Conversant identified necessity and risk of irreparable harm, the balance of interests, public interest and international comity as relevant factors. The Court also ordered a cumulative fine of RMB 1 million per day for noncompliance. International comity requires respect for sovereign equality and judicial independence while managing cross-border conflict. On reconsideration in Huawei v. Conversant, the Supreme People's Court held that the order appropriately considered its possible effect on German proceedings: the Chinese cases had been accepted first, and the order merely suspended an application to enforce a first-instance German judgment without stopping the German proceedings or diminishing the German judgment's legal effect. The daily fine was justified because an insufficient coercive measure could leave a high-value SEP order ineffective; the Court also noted substantial daily penalties used in comparable foreign cases. An anti-anti-suit injunction prevents a party from enforcing or seeking to enforce a foreign anti-suit order that would interfere with the domestic court's adjudication. Supreme People's Court cases (2024) Zui Gao Fa Zhi Min Zhong Nos. 914 and 915, reported in the 2024 annual IP case report, provide a representative standard: where an SEP holder has complied with its FRAND commitment while the implementer bears obvious fault and seeks overseas anti-suit or anti-enforcement relief to obstruct legitimate Chinese infringement proceedings or enforcement, a Chinese court may, after preliminary review, grant anti-anti-suit relief.
V. Conclusion Conduct preservation plays a vital role in intellectual-property litigation. Whether the request concerns a pre-litigation injunction or an injunction during pending proceedings, courts generally evaluate the applicant's likelihood of success, the risk of irreparable harm, the balance of interests and effects on the public interest. Timely preservation can protect substantive rights effectively while providing a flexible and efficient mechanism for complex and rapidly changing IP disputes.