IP Court streamlines patent-related disputes

A national-level intellectual property court has protected IP rights and improved the quality of case hearings by efficiently solving a large number of technology-related disputes since it was opened last year.

The IP Court, a division of the Supreme People's Court and established in Beijing in January 2019, is responsible for handling appeals of civil and administrative patent-related cases that mainly cover complicated and advanced technical issues.

In 2019, the IP Court recorded a total of 1,945 technology-related IP disputes, of which, 1,433 have been concluded, according to a report issued by the court on Thursday.

Among the accepted cases, 174 involved a party from abroad, including the European Union countries, the United States, Japan and South Korea, it added.

Given the difficulty and complexity of some technology-related IP disputes, the court set up a technical talent database last year, with more than 360 technical investigators and technical consulting experts covering more than 30 technical fields, improving the efficiency and quality in finding technical facts and hearing the cases, it said.

In addition, the court increased international visits and communication, "sharing our judicial protection for IP rights with other countries and learn successful practices from them," said Luo Dongchuan, vice-president of the top court and also the chief judge of the IP Court.

He noted such exchanges did not only contribute judges from home and abroad to understanding how each country was safeguarding IP rights, "but also helped us show what judicial efforts we paid on the IP protection to the world," he added.

The establishment of the IP Court, located in Beijing's Fengtai district, is to streamline the appeal process by allowing litigants to bypass top provincial courts.

It means litigants who disagree with rulings made by intermediate people's court at the city or prefecture levels, or that are made by specialized IP Courts, can appeal to the top court directly instead of first appealing to provincial high people's court.

The change to technology-related patent litigation procedure aims to help prevent inconsistency of legal application and improve the quality and efficiency of trials.