Protection of intellectual property has been highly valued under the strategy of innovation-driven development since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2012.

The establishment of the Intellectual Property Court was a major step in realizing the strategy of building China into a powerful country in terms of intellectual property as well as science and technology.

Ever since its establishment on Jan 1, 2019, the IP Court has been making gradual progress, adhering to its missions of pushing forward unification and consistency in criteria for technology-related IP cases, improving trial quality and efficiency, enhancing judicial credibility and international influence, strengthening innovation-driven development, and providing judicial guarantees for the implementation of the national intellectual property strategy.

In the past months, the IP Court has attained accomplishments in China's judicial protection of intellectual property.

Deepening judicial reform and innovation

On March 27, the first trial hearing of the court was held by a bench presided over by Hon. Mr. Luo Dongchuan, Justice, vice-president of the Supreme People's Court and the chief judge of the IP Court.

The case was appealed on Feb 15. The judgment was given on the same day of the hearing and the electronic judgment document was delivered to the parties through network on April 6.

The whole second instance procedure of the case took only 50 days.

The IP Court is mainly in charge of civil and administrative appeals involving professional technological issues, which often involve complicated facts, disputed claims and damages difficult to calculate.

In the past months, the court has been making efforts to explore new mechanisms and methods to improve the judicial protection of innovation.

In order to achieve a scientific, efficient and forward-looking development, "A development plan of the IP Court from 2019 to 2021" was drafted in which the court's development principles, goals, missions and basic guarantees, and their implementation were defined and outlined in detail.

Aiming to promote judgment consensus, 32 lectures have been given, "A detailed regulation on unifying trial standards" has been passed, and cases involving the same patent are allocated to the same judge or the same bench.

What's more, the IP Court is establishing a technical investigation office and completing regulations on how to involve technical investigators in trials to help judges to better understand technical issues.

The court is also exploring appealable partial judgments on whether there is an infringement or not, based on the established facts, to save judicial resources.

Circuit trials have also been optimized to make it easier for parties to litigate and reduce their litigation costs.

Promoting smart trials

Ever since it's established, informatization has been highly valued by the IP Court. Big data and artificial intelligence have been extensively adopted to improve efficiency of trials.

From April 23 to April 25, before the 19th World Intellectual Property Day, the IP Court held 11 open hearings related to high-tech issues including medical equipment devices, network data capture technology and optical technology.

By using virtual reality, augmented reality and remote zoom video technologies, efficiency of the hearings has been greatly improved.

In addition to advanced technologies, the court is optimizing an online platform connecting courts on different levels, through which 32 high courts and 43 intermediate courts are now able to accept appeals and share appellate case information and evidence.

The IP Court is also planning to establish a data sharing mechanism with the National Intellectual Property Administration (NIPA) database to access the legal status, examination and post-grant documents of patents, as well as the documents of global patent families and other relevant patents.

What is more, the court released its "Three-year plan of the IP Court's intelligentization (2019-2021)", and established a smart court construction group led by Zhou Xiang, deputy chief judge of the IP Court, which has already achieved profound progress on informatization.

"We will keep on enhancing top design and pushing forward the court's intelligent applications, to build a complete covered, interconnected, transparent and safe smart system," explained Wang Chuang, deputy chief judge of the IP Court.

Enhancing the protection of technological innovation

Building a highland of international judicial protection of IPR is the original intention and remains an important goal of the IP Court.

The court has already built up several research teams, focusing on the amendment of the Patent Law, and other main issues including anti-trust, standard essential patents, 5G technologies and new plant varieties, etc.

Better communication and exchanges have been promoted between the court and government departments including the NIPA and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, to optimize cooperation mechanisms for new patterns of judicial-administrative integrated protection of IPR.

Ever since it's establishment, the IP Court has been actively propagandizing China's judicial protection of IPR and its own progress, and has held or participated in 20 international exchange events on judicial protection of IPR, delivering the message that China is making efforts to strengthen IPR judicial protection.

A patent judge delegation led by WANG Chuang during a visit to France, Luxembourg and Germany exchanged opinions on trials of technology-related IPR cases, and introduced the IP Court and China's judicial progress on technology-related IPR trials.

Furthermore, Zhou Xiang delivered an English speech on the background and significance of the IP court in a China-Japan-South Korea seminar held by the International Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property (AIPPI).