China's top court sees more cases at intellectual property tribunal

BEIJING - The intellectual property tribunal of China's Supreme People's Court (SPC) has accepted 9,458 cases on appeal since its inauguration in January 2019, with an average annual growth of 49.3 percent over the past three years.

Among the cases, 7,680 have been concluded by the intellectual property tribunal, according to a report on the implementation of a decision regarding the litigation procedure for intellectual property cases.

The report was submitted on Sunday to an ongoing session of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress for review.

The SPC's intellectual property tribunal was established in January 2019 to hear appeals on patents and other technology-related intellectual property cases, as well as anti-monopoly cases, as part of the country's efforts to strengthen the protection of intellectual property rights and foster a world-class business environment.

Over one-fifth of the cases handled by the tribunal involved the new generation of information technology, high-end equipment manufacturing, biomedicine, and other emerging industries of strategic importance, the report said.

Chinese courts will further strengthen the protection of scientific and technological innovations and enhance the judicial protection of intellectual property rights for core technologies in key fields and emerging industries, said Zhou Qiang, president of the SPC, while delivering the report at the session.

Concrete measures will be taken to maintain fair market competition, Zhou said, stressing efforts to ensure the lawful and impartial handling of foreign-related intellectual property cases.