On 26 December 2017, an additional intellectual property (IP) tribunal of China commenced operation in the southern city of Shenzhen. Mr. Zhou Qiang, president of the Supreme People's Court of China (SPC), was present to perform the plaque unveiling ceremony for the tribunal.

 

Shenzhen, home to the country’s first special economic zone set up in 1980 and the nation's front-runner in terms of technological innovation, is now ranked second, only after Tokyo, in the world's invention hot spots, according to World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)'s Global Innovation Index 2017, which measured inventive activity based on the number of international patent applications filed between 2011 and 2015.

 

As a major hub for high-tech industries housing numerous multinational IP-focused companies, including the home grown ones such as Huawei, Tencent, and ZTE, Shenzhen is seeing an exponential growth in IP cases over recent years. And Shenzhen Intellectual Property Tribunal was set up on the one hand to relieve the Shenzhen Intermediate Court of the mounting IP caseloads, and on the other hand to support the development of the Qianhai New District, a pilot area for closer cooperation between mainland China and Hong Kong for innovation in service industries including finance, information services, and technology services.

 

The new tribunal is empowered by SPC for jurisdiction over the following cases:

i)       first-instance IP-related civil cases concerning patent, new plant variety, integrated circuit (IC) layout design, recognition of well-known trademark or monopoly dispute occurring within the jurisdiction of Shenzhen;

ii)      first-instance IP-related civil cases concerning technical secret, computer software, copyright, trademark, unfair competition or technology contract dispute occurring within the jurisdiction of Shenzhen with a claim value exceeding RMB5 million, as well as first-instance IP-related civil cases with a claim value exceeding RMB10 million where both parties are domiciled in Shenzhen;

iii)     first-instance IP-related administrative and criminal cases as well as monopoly administrative cases, other than those cases under the jurisdiction of the grassroots courts of Shenzhen; and

iv)     appeal cases against first-instance adjudications of IP-related civil, criminal, and administrative cases made by grassroots courts of Shenzhen.