http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1495031/china-planning-open-first-intellectual-property-court-guangdong

China planning to open nation's first intellectual property court in Guangdong

Pilot programme likely to start in Guangdong then be rolled out nationally

Compared to 2012, in the year 2013, the number of first instance civil intellectual property cases accepted and disposed by local courts grew by 1.33% and 5.29% to 88,583 and 88,286 cases respectively. Within each intellectual property branch, the case numbers and percentage change compared to last year were as follows:

Newly accepted cases: 9,195 patent cases, 5.01% lower; 23,272 trademark cases, 17.45% higher; 51,351 copyright cases, 4.64% lower; 949 cases involving technology agreements, 27.21% higher; 1,302 cases involving unfair competition (of which, 72 were first instance civil cases involving monopoly disputes), 15.94% higher; 2,514 cases involved other intellectual property disputes, 13.91% higher.

Disposed cases: 1,697 first instance cases involving foreign parties, 18.75% higher; 483 first instance cases involving parties from Hong Kong, Taiwan or Macao, 21.21% lower; 69 first instance civil cases involving monopoly disputes, 40.82% higher.

For second instance cases involving civil intellectual property disputes, 11,957 cases were accepted and 11,553 cases disposed, respectively 24.80% and 24.33% higher than last year.

For reopened (zaishen) cases involving civil intellectual property disputes (including carried-over cases), 75 were newly accepted and 96 were concluded cases, which were 56.40% and 56.95% respectively lower than last year.

The Supreme People’s Court (SPC)’s intellectual property division accepted 457 civil cases involving intellectual property disputes and concluded 417 cases, which were 92.82% and 69.51% higher than last year. Of the 365 newly accepted applications for retrial, 341 were disposed.