China has set up Beijing Internet Court as its second internet court on 9 September 2018, following the establishment in August 2017 of the country's first internet court in Hangzhou.

 

Beijing Internet Court is given the jurisdiction to handle internet-related cases originally under the jurisdiction of the basic courts in Beijing, which include: disputes over online shopping contracts, network service contracts, and small internet financial loan contracts; internet copyright ownership or infringement disputes; disputes over domain name ownership; network tort liability disputes; product liability disputes arising from purchases through e-commerce platform; internet public interest litigation initiated by procuratorial organs; administrative disputes arising from internet administration, and other internet civil and admnistrative cases as assigned by the higher level court. For cases of appeal and those of protest against the decisions made by Beijing Internet Court, they fall under the jurisdiction of Beijing Intellectual Property Court and the Fourth Intermediate People's Court of Beijing respectively.

 

Beijing Internet Court operates on the principle of "internet-related cases to be adjudicated via the Internet", which allows the litigants to perform through an online litigation platform the whole or part of the litigation process from case filing, mediation, acceptance of case, service of process, hearing to judgment proclamation. For cases in which a party objects to have the proceedings conducted online or cases which are considered by the court to be unfit for online adjudication, they can be adjudicated by means of online and offline proceedings in combination.