Source: Xinhua News Agency
Since its establishment on Jan 1, 2019, the Intellectual Property Court of the Supreme People's Court (IPC) has accepted 5,121 cases, with 4,220 of them concluded. In 2020, the IPC concluded 2,787 cases, a 95% growth over the year of 2019 (1,354).
Mr. He Zhonglin, Deputy President Judge of the IPC, said “since the establishment of the IPC, the average period for examining the second instance of the technical IP cases has been reduced, and the quality and efficiency of examination have been improved”. The average period for examining the civil and criminal appeals was 123 days in 2020, reduced by over 50% than the average period of the local high courts (one year).
The IPC makes the final judgment of the technical IP cases, and heard over one-eighth of the cases related to the strategic emerging industries. In Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd v. Conversant Wireless licensing S.A.R.L. (concerning a standard-essential patent) , the IPC adopted the rule of injunction cited in the Law of Civil Procedure to make the first anti-suit injunction judgment in the IP area. The parties involved settled all the lawsuits worldwide. Our national interests, judicial sovereignty, legal rights and interests of enterprises have been well safeguarded.
The IPC adopted the system of punitive damages to crack down the malicious infringements. In Case on Punitive Damages on Carbomer Technical Secret Misappropriation, the IPC imposed the ceiling of statutory punitive damages by 5 times, ruling that Anhui Newman compensate Guangzhou Tinci and Jiujiang Tinci RMB30 million for the economic losses. This was the first judgment on punitive damages made by the SPC. In Case on High-amount Compensation for Vanillin Technical Secret Misappropriation, the IPC ordered the infringers to compensate the technical secret holders RMB159 Million. This was the business secret infringement with the highest amount of compensation. According to Mr. He, we will further improve the system of compensation for IP infringement and more judgments with high compensation will be made.
