On February 22, 2024, the IP Tribunal (IPC) of the Supreme People’s Court released some statistics and the Top 10 Influential Cases for the 5-year anniversary of its founding. The IP Tribunal is somewhat similar to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Interesting data points include:

• More than 1/5 of cases have foreign-related factors including 1,678 with foreign parties and concluded 1,198 of these cases;
• There were 2,977 administrative appeal cases related to invalidation in 5 years;
• The average award for invention patent infringement on appeal was only 2.727 million RMB (~$379 thousand USD);
• Trade secret misappropriation has yielded high awards including 218 million RMB in the melamine case (of which 80 million was for patent infringement); 202 million RMB in a rubber antioxidant case; and 159 million RMB in the vanillin case. (The IPC also recently upheld a 201.54 million RMB verdict in another trade secret case); and
• There were 326 trade secret misappropriation cases over the last 5 years.

The full text of the announcement is available here (Chinese only). More information about the Top 10 Influential Cases can be found here.