On March 30, 2023, China’s Supreme People’s Court released the Annual Report of the Intellectual Property Court (IPC) for 2022 (最高人民法院知识产权法庭年度报告（2022)). The report lists statistics for 2022 as well as from its founding in 2019 through 2022 and achievements for 2022.  Of note, the IPC accepted case number increased by 18% to 6,183 technology-related IP appeal cases and monopoly appeal cases. The 18% increase represents a slowdown in the growth rate of newly accepted cases as appeals relating to patent grant and invalidation disputes have fallen significantly over a year ago and the IPC stopped hearing appeal cases involving technology-related IP contracts from May 1, 2022.

Interesting 2022 statistics include:

• the overall rate of remand and reversal was only 13.5%.

• the average number of cases accepted (including newly accepted and unclosed existing cases) per judge was 142.5, an increase of 16 cases from 2021;

• average case closure was 79.9 cases per judge, by 3.6 cases fewer year-on-year;

• the average adjudication period was 165.2 calendar days;

• the IPC accepted 2,956 new second-instance substantive civil disputes, of which

  • 615 involved infringement of invention patents,

  • 968 on infringement of utility patents,

  • 312 on patent application rights and patent ownership,

  • 144 on new plant variety, 6 on layout design of integrated circuit,

  • 78 on technological secrets,

  • 648 on computer software,

  • 96 on technology-related IP contracts, 15 on monopoly disputes, and

  • 74 on other disputes.

• the IPC accepted 887 new second-instance administrative cases, of which:

  • 241 administrative disputes involved re-examination of invention patent applications,

  • 234 on invalidation of invention patents,

  • 27 on re-examination of utility model patent applications,

  • 207 on invalidation of utility model patents, zero on re-examination of design patent application,

  • 84 on invalidation of design patents,

  • 3 on new plant variety,

  • 2 on layout design of integrated circuits,

  • 24 on monopoly disputes, and

  • 65 on administrative enforcement.

• cases involving foreign parties (including Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan) increased 4.6 on 2021 with 457 new cases, accounting for 10.4% of the new cases.

The full report is available here (Chinese) and here (English).