According to a new report in the Wall Street Journal this week, Chinese courts are aggressively nullifying patents owned by Western technology companies, in industries the government deems important for the nation. The report cites US and EU officials, who are renewing accusations against the world’s second largest economy of technology theft.

The officials note Beijing is employing its court systems and patent panels to provide legal justification for the infringement upon foreign intellectual property, particularly in sectors the government deems important to the nation, including biotechnology, electronics and semiconductors and rare-earth mineral technologies.

The officials cited cases such as a US company which produced X-ray equipment which saw a decade-old patent declared invalid by a legal panel, and a similar case in a Shanghai court, where a Spanish mobile-antenna designer lost a similar case.

Another case involved a Chinese court ruling that a Japanese conglomerate was in violation of anti-trust laws, for not issuing a rival Chinese company a license for its technology.

The conflict is an outgrowth of a larger battle between the United States, and China for dominance in the technological and economic realms. The US has been seeking to hamper China’s technological development, primarily by denying the nation’s companies access to advanced technologies such as computer chips, and the technologies to make them.

In response, China has accused the United States of politicizing science and technology in an effort to simply dominate the fields itself. Washington has responded with accusations of theft of technologies, and misappropriating technologies it was allowed for civilian research to use them for military purposes.