Tian Lipu: Specialized court hearing IPR cases to be established

"Intellectual property protection should be further strengthened due to an increasing trend of rampant intellectual property violations last year," said Tian Lipu before the opening ceremony of the 2nd Session of the 12th CPPCC National Committee on March 3rd, 2014. He told Xinhua.net that China is going to establish specialized IPR courts this year, a topic that will be discussed in the upcoming meeting.

Back to November 15th 2013, Decisions on several key issues on comprehensively deepening reforms of the CPC Central Committee provided that intellectual property utilization and protection should be enhanced; incentive mechanisms on technological innovation activities should be improved; and the establishment of intellectual property courts should be explored.

Statistics show that in 2013, the State Intellectual Property Office received 825,000 patent applications on inventions, up 26.3% year-on-year, topping the world for three consecutive years.

Tian said that cases on intellectual property such as patent and trade secret often include technical expertise and evolve with new technologies such as the internet, which requires judges to be equipped with broad knowledge and adequate experience. The establishment of the specialized intellectual property court will become an important breakthrough in IPR area in China, which would serves better as a guard of our rights. [Chinese version is available on Xinhua.net]