Balancing ‘act preservation’ measures in intellectual property actions

Article 100 of the new Civil Procedure Law (as amended in 2012), implemented from 1 January 2013, specifies the conditions and procedure for preservation (including property preservation and act preservation) in legal actions. Before the most recent revisions, the Civil Procedure Law only provided for property preservation measures and was silent on act preservation measures. The author believes that act preservation measures will play an important role in enhancing the promptness and effectiveness of intellectual property (IP) protection.

Recent revisions to the Civil Procedure Law will have a positive impact on the application of act preservation in the field of IP infringement actions, but at the level of IP judicial practice the system requires further improvement.

Civil preservation system

The act preservation established by the new Civil Procedure Law makes the civil preservation system more systematised and reasonable, providing legitimacy for the dedicated laws such as the Trademark Law, Patent Law, Copyright Law, etc., and related judicial interpretations existing in the IP field, giving the system a legal basis at the level of basic procedural law.