Guangzhou IP Court: Annual Number of Cases Accepted Reaches 4,940

Feynman Z. LIANG | July 12, 2016

Guangzhou IP Court was established on December 16 as one of the three IP Courts in China (Guangzhou, Beijing and Shanghai). These three specialized courts make up China's first batch of pilot IP courts.

1. High Number of IP Cases
From Dec 21, 2014 to Dec 31, 2015, Guangzhou IP Court has accepted 4,940 IP cases and closed 3,393 cases, with a total rate of case closed up to 68.68%. In Guangzhou IP Court, there are now altogether 13 presiding judges, each of which closed 261 cases on average every year. The number is 2.36 times of the average number of judges in Guangdong Province.


(Statistic from Guangzhou IP Court)

2. A Number of Cases Involve Foreigners
Among the 4,940 IP cases accepted by Guangzhou IP Court, there are more than 200 cases with at least one party being entity from Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan or foreign countries. Among these 200 cases, there are 83 cases involve American entities while a couple of cases involve British, French and Japanese entities.

3. Introduction of Technical Consultation into the Court System
Technical investigation officer was invited into case hearing in 16 cases, providing crucial assistance to the judge in the technical related IP cases. Last year, Guangzhou IP Court issued “Guangzhou IP Court Technical Expert Consulting Committee Rule (Trial)” in an attempt to form a Technical Expert Consulting Committee to provide technical opinion for the judges in technical related IP cases.

4. Reform in Reviewing System
Under the court reform program, the judge and bench are responsible for life for the quality of trial. The bench has discretion on requesting consultation from the president of the court, technical investigation officer, presiding judge joint meeting etc. The consultation opinion is provided for reference only and has no binding effect on the judgment. In the old days, all judgment must be reviewed by judicial committee before issuance, providing opportunities for the influence on the case by the administration system. Under the court reform program, the reviewing system was canceled and the responsibility of judicial committee is limited to research on application of law and summing up of trial experience.

5. Publication of judgment online
Since the establishment of Guangzhou IP Court, judgment of the cases has become available to public on Guangzhou IP Court’s Website. Up until December 31, 2015, electronic version of judgment in 1,100 cases was published, which is 88.58% of the total number of adjudicated cases. Live trial channel has been opened on the official website of Guangzhou IP Court as well as on the wechat client, providing public access to watching the public trial of IP cases online.