On September 24, at the 24th meeting of the Standing Committee of the 15th Beijing Municipal People's Congress, President Of Beijing Higher People's Court Kou Fang reported on the trial work of intellectual property in the municipal courts since 2016.

    From 2016 to the first half of 2020, the city's courts received a total of 241,686 IPR cases and concluded 225,557, with an average annual increase of over 30% in the number of closed cases. Beijing courts have the most comprehensive types of intellectual property cases, ranking among the top in the country regarding the number of cases. The number of administrative cases of patent and trademark authorization under their special jurisdiction exceeds 10,000 every year. In 2019, the total number of cases exceeded 20,000 for the first time, totaling 23,041.

    Beijing Municipal courts concluded 141,303 copyright cases related to cultural and creative industries, accounting for 62.6 percent of intellectual property rights cases, and protected the rights and interests of cultural creators by the law. In Qiong Yao v. Yu Zheng and other copyright infringement cases, the number of damages amounted to five million yuan; In the "Jinxiu Weiyang" copyright case, the plaintiff fully supports the claim of 10 million yuan compensation. We will actively explore new rules and standards for the judicial protection of innovative achievements. For example, through the trial of the first new type of case in China, short videos that reflect original intellectual work achievements can constitute works to be protected. Upholding the core socialist values, Beijing Municipal courts aim to guide the whole society to establish a correct view of good and evil through judicial judgment, oppose infringement in the name of innovation, and promote the digital economy's development.

    The average amount of compensation was a marked increase from the previous five years. The average compensation amount in trademark cases increased from 118,526 yuan in 2015 to 417,823 yuan in 2019. Patent cases rose from 428,056 yuan to 619,078 yuan. Copyright cases increased from 25,443 yuan to 39,645 yuan. Cases of unfair competition increased from 434,624 yuan to 846,845 yuan. The city High Court heard a case involving Jin Yong's martial arts novel game adaptation right and unfair competition award of more than 16 million yuan. Punitive damages shall be applied by the law for malicious and repeated infringements. In the case of infringement of trademark rights, such as Yanhuang Yingdong Company v. Amazon Company, punitive damages were applied, and the judgment was made to compensate for economic losses of 76.46 million yuan. In addition to punishing civil infringements by the law, criminal acts infringing on intellectual property rights have been severely punished by the law. Since 2016, the municipal courts have accepted 648 criminal cases of intellectual property rights and concluded 629 cases.

    The average hearing time of patent cases in the municipal court is 274.5 days, far lower than the 29 months in the US court and the 18 months in the EU court. Among them, the first-instance hearing efficiency of invention patent cases ranks first in the world.

    In 2018, over 1,000 cases were settled by three trial teams in the municipal courts, and the number of cases settled by one team reached 2,411.

    In 2019, the trademark expediting adjudication team of Beijing Intellectual Property Court concluded 8,502 cases, with an average of 760 cases per person.

    Source: China IP News