China's courts increase IPR prosecutions

A meeting of the Supreme People's Court of China has discussed the rise in intellectual property rights violations that have been dealt with since the country acceeded to the World Trade Organization in 2001.

The SPC revealed statistics, reported in the government-controlled People's Daily newspaper, which show that, from 2002 to 2006, 54,321 IPR cases were heard in Chinese courts of first instance, an increase of 146%. Higher courts dealt with 13,170 cases, a rise of 8.9%. The majority of these consisted of copyright, Internet domain name and trade mark disputes.

The People's Daily also reported that, last year, IPR cases rose nearly 6% to 14,219 civil cases.