Per several news sources, China’s Supreme People’s Court (SPC) held a special symposium on June 27, 2024 to introduce the work of the Intellectual Property Tribunal of the Supreme People’s Court in serving and safeguarding scientific and technological innovation and helping to develop new productivity. Per the symposium, “China is the country with the most patent cases in the world and is increasingly becoming a preferred place for international intellectual property litigation.” Some statistics from the symposium follow:

• Since its establishment on January 1, 2019 to June 26 this year, the Intellectual Property Court has accepted 20,338 cases and concluded 17,638 cases;

• Invention patent cases have increased by an average of 30.9% per year;

• Cases involving foreign parties account for about 10% of the courts, with an average annual growth of 28.6%;

• Among the invention patent authorization and confirmation cases, foreign-related cases account for as much as one-third;

• The retrial rate of civil substantive cases involving technical intellectual property rights was 19.4%, and the mediation withdrawal rate was 38.1%, both higher than before the reform;

• The rate of retrial of administrative substantive cases involving technical intellectual property rights was 6.9%, which was basically the same as before the reform;

• The retrial rates of civil and administrative substantive cases involving technical intellectual property rights were 1.1% and 0.13% respectively, which were much lower than before the reform.

• The average trial period for substantive cases was 182.1 days, and for jurisdictional cases was 29.9 days, both shorter than before the reform; and

• The rate of applications for retrial of technical intellectual property cases in courts across the country has dropped by about 10 percentage points.

Source: CHINA IP Law Update