Beijing court sees rise in disputes involving digital economy

Beijing Haidian District People's Court saw a large number of intellectual property disputes regarding digital economy over the past few years, with more efforts undertaken to improve the quality of relevant case to serve the industrial development in a healthy manner.

The court issued a report on Wednesday, showing that its judges concluded 4,840 lawsuits involving digital economy in the past three years, accounting for 56.7 percent of its total IP cases.

"The proportion has indicated the rapid growth of the digital economy and also demonstrated our strong judicial determination to protect IP rights in this field by better handling relevant cases," said Zhang Gong, vice-president of the court.

Yang Dejia, chief judge of the court's No 5 civil adjudication tribunal, noted that the protection of online platform data rights and digital cultural products are major focuses and hot issues in the field, saying that relevant legal research should be enhanced.

"For example, how to regulate improper acquisition and use of platform data and how to seek a balance between data protection and data flow are worthy of attention and research," he added.

While pledging to strengthen the IP protection while helping promote the industrial development, the court also called for government agencies and associations to form joint efforts to ensure the industry can develop healthily.