Professor Wenwei Guan Shared His Recent Research at the Intellectual Property Court of the Supreme People’s Court

On the morning of Saturday, May 9, 2026, Professor Wenwei Guan, invited by the Intellectual Property Court of the Supreme People’s Court (SPC), as the second keynote speaker in 2026 of SPC Intellectual Property Court’s New Knowledge Forum, delivered the talk in Beijing to the judges of the SPC Intellectual Property Court, as well as to 4 Intermediate Intellectual Property Courts and 43 Intermediate People’s Courts via online participation. In his talk, entitled “Creativity, Market, Global Trade Order and Disorder”, Professor Guan revealed the interplay between creativity, market dynamics, and the institutionalization of global trade. In this evolution process, creativity-boosted technological advances both facilitated and formed an integral part of the Industrial Revolution’s proliferation in trade, with the WTO representing the contemporary institutionalization outcome.

As has long been established globally, intellectual property rights are private and negative rights. Intellectual property rights as creativity infused in inventive products and original works, along with the goodwill established thereafter in trade, are separate from goods and services in trade, and their protection function as a de facto competition regime in global trade. Amid rising trade fragmentation, coupled with the rise of creativity in the East—which has shifted the global creativity center to East Asia—the global trading framework is undergoing a post-Industrial Revolution reconstruction and rebalancing of the creativity-market-trade order “Three-in-One” institutionalization mechanism. This new institutional construction calls for an innovation-centered, competition-minded, and trade-facilitating post-Industrial Revolution intellectual property regime, rather than trade decoupling and “small yard, high fence” construction.