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Supreme court gets tough on IPR protection
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China’s Supreme People’s Court recently released new guidelines regarding the judicial protection of intellectual property rights which will be implemented during the 13th Five-Year Plan from 2016-2020. This is the first time that the Supreme People’s Court released such IPR guidelines since the court accepted and heard the first legal case concerning a patent dispute in 1985. During 1985-2016, the court dealt with more than 792,000 civil cases involving IPR.
The Supreme People’s Court has considered the increasing number of cases involving IPR and the high complexity and different implications of them, and has stressed the importance of “hearing IPR cases of various types in a fair and efficient way” and “establishing an effective mechanism to ensure the correct implementation of laws.”
Most importantly, the court urged the introduction of punitive compensation regulations into the Copyright Law, Patent Law, Anti-unfair Competition Law, and to increase the amount of statutory compensation for infringements of IPRs.
However, during IPR matters, the principle shall be to seek remedial compensation first and the punitive compensation as complementary measure to recover the losses of the victims, prevent the violator benefiting from their actions and award costs against the loser. This is, without doubt, an innovative measure giving the PRC Courts the possibility to assess not only the “actual damages,” that are always difficult to prove during trial, but also to punish violators.
Punitive damages are, in fact, awarded in addiction to actual damages under the condition that the infringer acted with recklessness, malice or deceit.
This measure could represent a possible turning point and a huge chance for all the foreign companies struggling with IPR issues in China. China understands the value of IPR and is determined to become a “powerful IP nation”. Its five-year plan recognizes that strong intellectual property protection and enforcement will be the key to achieve its objective of innovation-driven economic growth.
Moreover, the Chinese government recently launched a national copyright monitoring website, which provides 24/7 monitoring of the Internet and help identify suspected right infringements.
China is definitely making stronger efforts to better recognize and protect IPR as part of its larger effort to create and protect investment in innovation, research and development.
The author is Managing Partner at GWA Law, Tax & Accounting. Shanghai Daily condensed the article.
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