Patent law developments in China

From last year, with the improvement of China’s industrial technological level, as well as tremendous changes in the international competitive environment, China’s patent protection system and patent protection practices were also changed and adapted to the same. With an imminent drug patent link system, patent application ability is being continuously improved, the patent judicial protection system is being further perfected, the amount of infringement compensation has obviously risen, and the punitive damage standard of deliberate infringement is being strongly supported.

The number of patent litigation cases has increased significantly. In 2017, Chinese courts received 213,480 first-instance intellectual property (IP) cases and closed 202,970 cases in total, a rise of 46.04% and 43.13%, respectively from 2016, in which 16,044 cases related to patent rights. In the same period, the IP courts in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou accepted a total of 26,698 IP rights (IPR) cases in the first and second instances, and concluded 22,631 cases. Beijing Intellectual Property Court accepted 1,161 patent administrative litigation cases, an increase of 5.2% on the same period the previous year, and closed 753 cases, an increase of 27.2% on the previous year.

With a tremendous scale in creation and application of various types of IPR, and enhanced values of some IPR, there are IP disputes that are prone to occur frequently, while the supply side of non-litigation dispute resolution mechanisms is insufficient, so that the rigid demand for judicial protection is continuously on the rise.