Based on a literature review of 4612 journal articles from 2000 to 2004, this study depicted the trends of Intellectual Property (IP)research of mainland China. Statistics showed that there was a misbalance in production style, geographical distribution, research subjects, disciplinary preference and adoption of research methodology. We concluded that despite a widespread interest in IP research in mainland China, there is still a gap between the research status quo and the trend of international IP studies. A more balanced research scenario could be developed with more emphasis on empirical studies with synthetically approaches.