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Inside Driscoll’s Berry Strange Case of Corporate Espionage: How China Stole Its Secrets

2026-09-21 | original

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Why This Matters

This story highlights how intellectual property theft extends beyond tech and software into agriculture, showing that even proprietary plant genetics face significant risk when companies expand into China. It underscores the ongoing tension between Western firms seeking growth in Chinese markets and the challenge of protecting valuable IP once there, a dynamic with broader implications for global trade and innovation.

Key Takeaways

Driscoll's has filed over 20 lawsuits in China against companies accused of stealing its proprietary blueberry plants and greenhouse designs.
Plant theft is relatively easy to execute, often requiring only unauthorized cuttings, making enforcement difficult despite legal action.
Western agricultural companies are shifting strategy toward licensing agreements to recoup royalties rather than solely pursuing costly IP litigation.

Worth a Look

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Giant fruit grower Driscoll’s is blue in the face over what it calls outright blueberry theft. Fifteen years after the company brought its blueberries to China, it’s filed over 20 lawsuits against Chinese companies accused of stealing greenhouse designs and the plants themselves, which are proprietary. It’s estimated that there are thousands of illegal hectares of blueberry farmland across the country, with thousands more likely to spring up.

Stealing a licensed blueberry plant is not very difficult, according to The Wall Street Journal. It just requires nabbing plant cuttings and replanting them. Planasa, a Spanish western berry company, used private investigators to catch another Chinese company using this method and got them to admit to covertly taking the plant.

Driscoll’s is continuing official operations in China, but is pushing intellectual property protection harder in Chinese courts. Additionally, because so many Chinese companies and individual farmers already have access to different varieties of berries, Western blueberry-genetics farmers are now looking to let them obtain official licenses to recoup royalties.

To sum it all up, it’s not exactly a sweet time to be in the Chinese blueberry business.

Explore topics: driscoll's corporate espionage blueberry theft china ip lawsuits planasa