High-profile IP cases to be published in English

Pan Wei, IP tribunal chief judge assistant of the Beijing High People's Court, displays an example case on Wednesday in Beijing. [Photo by Zou Hong / chinadaily.com.cn]

High-profile intellectual property cases and related hearings or documents will now be published in English for the convenience of foreign litigants, announced Beijing High People's Court.

At a news conference on Wednesday, the court published 10 example IP cases in English and said that this would become a regular occurrence, but only for influential disputes and important ruling.

"We have had the idea to supply English versions for some time, but due to the limited number of English speakers in the court, the first batch of cases could not been issued until now," said Pan Wei, assistant to the court's IP tribunal chief judge.

"We also want both Chinese and foreigners to understand our IP case hearings and keep our work transparent.”

In recent year, IP cases involving foreign litigants have been on the rise in Beijing, "which is why we decided to regularly introduce our work in this way," said Pan, adding that the English version will also help Chinese courts and foreigners better understand case's legal backgrounds.

Also on Wednesday, the court issued a guideline for handling IP disputes in cyberspace following a rapid in such cases in the capital.

Yang Boyong, chief judge of the tribunal, said that the guideline was based on two years of research and study and covered online copyright and brands.

"We summarize difficulties in hearing IP cases on the internet and clarifying web operators' responsibilities in the guideline, helping the city's grassroots courts to effectively deal with related disputes," Yang said.

Last year alone, Beijing courts filed 13,939 IP cases, up 24.1 percent year-on-year, according to the High People's Court's figures. More than 10,000 of the disputes took place online.

Of the cases, 10,935 related to copyright, 506 were about patents and 1,210 were caused by brand infringement, the court said.