Beijing courts ramping up IP protection efforts, white paper says

Beijing courts have tackled more than 600,000 intellectual property disputes over the past three decades, the majority of which were resolved in the past 10 years, the city's High People's Court said.

According to the White Paper on Beijing Courts' specialized Trial of Intellectual Property Cases for Three Decades, which was issued by the high court on Wednesday, courts citywide dealt with 624,577 such lawsuits from 1993 to September this year, and 549,160 of them were filed in the past decade.

The rapidly growing number of IP disputes has reflected the capital's fast development in various areas and has also demonstrated the public's increasing demand for IP protection, the paper said.

It revealed that a large number of the cases are related to online copyright, meaning the city has embraced the prosperity of the internet and digital sectors. In addition, a rising number of lawsuits involved new industries and new technologies such as biomedicine, high-end equipment manufacturing, new materials and new energies, it said.

No matter what fields the cases are related to, Beijing courts have strictly implemented IP-related laws over the past 30 years, with harsher punishments handed down to violators, to strengthen IP protection and promote innovation by rule of law, the paper said.

It pointed out that Beijing courts are becoming one of the world's preferred destinations for IP-related lawsuits because of their high-quality rulings, efficiency in case handling and equal protection for litigants from home and abroad.

It showed that courts citywide, from 2013 to September this year, tackled 63,370 IP cases involving foreign litigants and plaintiffs from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, with an average annual growth rate of 10.4 percent.

To handle the boom in lodged IP disputes, Beijing courts have also stepped up efforts to improve the professionalism of the case hearings.

"For example, we've attached great importance to judicial talent education and have established judicial teams to specialize in IP case handling and conduct more research on new technologies," Ren Xuefeng, vice-president of the high court, said while introducing the paper.

Thirty years ago, there were only 22 judges dealing with IP cases in Beijing, but now there are 157. Meanwhile, there are also some 200 judicial assistants serving in Beijing courts to help judges solve IP lawsuits more efficiently, the paper said.

In addition, courts across the city have invited mediators to join the teams to deal with IP disputes before litigation. The paper showed that from 2016 to September this year, 53,862 cases were successfully resolved through mediation.

On Wednesday, the Beijing High People's Court also published 30 influential IP cases, demonstrating the court's determination and efforts in relevant case hearings over the past three decades.

Ren said that Beijing courts will focus more on talent education to further strengthen judicial protection on IP rights so that they can better serve high-quality development in the capital.