On July 17, 2024, the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) announced a fine of 1 million RMB against an unnamed defendant for destroying evidence in violation of an evidence preservation order. The case involved alleged copyright infringement of SketchUp software. Per the SPC, the defendant has paid the fine and has not appealed.

The unnamed plaintiff, a software company believed to be Trimble, is the copyright owner of SketchUp software. The court of first instance made an evidence preservation ruling based on a pre-litigation evidence preservation application, preserving evidence of the copying, installation, and use of a series of computer software on computers and other facilities and equipment in the business premises of the defendant, Shanghai XXXX Architectural Design Consulting Co., Ltd. On July 30, 2021, the court of first instance served the evidence preservation ruling at the business premises of the defendant, and explained to it the obligation to cooperate with the evidence preservation and the legal consequences of refusing to cooperate.

However, in the process of taking evidence preservation measures, the court of first instance found twice that many employees of defendant continued to delete the computer software at the instruction of their relevant managers. For this reason, the court of first instance explained the nature of its behavior and the legal consequences to the defendant on the spot twice and ordered it to stop immediately. After on-site investigation and confirmation, multiple WeChat groups of the defendant had notification records requesting the deletion of the software. 

The SPC stated,

This court states that Article 114, paragraph 1, item 1 and item 6 of the Civil Procedure Law of the People’s Republic of China stipulate that if a litigation participant or other person forges or destroys important evidence to hinder the trial of the case, or refuses to perform a judgment or ruling of the People’s Court that has become legally effective, the People’s Court may impose a fine or detention according to the severity of the circumstances. Article 118, paragraph 1 of the law stipulates that the amount of the fine for an organization shall be not less than RMB 50,000 and not more than RMB 1 million. In this case, during the process of the first instance court taking evidence preservation measures, the company destroyed important evidence to hinder the trial of the case and refused to implement the effective evidence preservation ruling, which seriously hindered the normal civil litigation order and made it impossible for the People’s Court to accurately find out the key facts of the case such as the specific number of alleged infringing software installed by the company. Severe sanctions should be imposed according to law.

The decision is （2024）最高法知司惩1号 and can be found here (Chinese only).