On March 8, 2024 at the 14th National People’s Congress, Zhang Jun, President of the Supreme People’s Court (SPC), submitted the SPC’s Work Report summarizing the accomplishments of the past year.  With respect to intellectual property, the Report stated 490,000 intellectual property cases were concluded, and punitive damages were applied to 319 cases.

One paragraph of the report was dedicated to intellectual property:

Intellectual property rights shall be strictly protected in accordance with the law. The number of intellectual property cases concluded reached 490,000, up 1.8% year on year. Punitive damages for 319 cases were applied, up by 117% year on year, with the amount of compensation awarded reaching 1.16 billion RMB, up by 3.5 times. In the trial of the case of infringement upon the patent for invention and technical secret of “melamine,” on the basis of ordering the infringer to compensate 218 million RMB, comprehensive reconciliation was achieved in the enforcement, the infringer obtained the license for use, and the right holder finally got 658 million RMB, which set a new record for domestic intellectual property cases. “Fishing rights” must be curbed. A company advertised that its “self-service networking” software could be downloaded and used “free of charge,” but filed more than 9,000 lawsuits on the ground that users did not retain their copyright logos on the website pages. After a hearing, the court held that it induced a large number of “torts” in the form of improper business operation, and the profits obtained from the claims should not be supported, the judgment and compensation standards were significantly lowered, and bulk litigation was immediately dropped. Go further, hand in hand. The two “unicorns”, each with nearly 1,000 patents and a valuation of more than 10bn, have repeatedly exchanged claims of infringement. The Court convinced the two sides to abandon zero-sum thinking and reach a package settlement of more than 10 patent disputes. The Supreme People’s Court issued Judicial Proposal No. 3 on Protection of Film Intellectual Property Rights, and promoted the Golden Rooster Hundred Flowers Film Festival to hold the first forum on protection of film intellectual property rights. Film and television producers are more confident in innovative film and television productions, and are integrating “watching movies is enjoyment and obeying the law is an obligation” in their works and pre-screening advertisements by various means to create an intellectual property protection atmosphere.

The full text of the Work Report is available here (Chinese only). A summary of the Work Report is available here (Chinese only).