First Chinese IP Court Forum Held in Beijing

On 16-17 April 2015, the First Chinese IP Court Forum & High-Level Symposium on IP Protection in the Context of Judicial Reform was held in Beijing.

This forum was jointly organised by the Intellectual Property Academy of Renmin University of China and Beijing Intellectual Property Law Society. It attracted 300 plus participants, including judges from courts of various levels nationwide, as well as IP experts, attorneys, and company representatives from home and abroad. The opening ceremony speech was delivered by Mr. Song Xiaoming, chief judge of the IP Tribunal of Supreme People's Court of China.

This forum studied some pressing issues that need to be addressed in the course of China's judicial reforms, including innovative development of judicial IP protection as well as the roles of China's first batch of specialised IP courts set up near the end of last year, and major challenges faced by them.

More than 50 IP experts and scholars from different provinces, Taiwan region, and overseas gathered to present on topics surrounding the following four themes of this forum:

Creation and future of China's IP courts, covering current profile of the courts, issues faced by them, and judicial reform of unifying jurisdiction over civil, criminal, and administrative IP-related cases;
Judicial protection for IP rights and innovative development, covering comparison of Chinese and foreign judicial protection for IP rights, and judicial protection for commercial and industrial enterprises and cultural and creative sectors;
Application of preservation measures in IP-related litigation procedure, covering preservation measures for trade secret cases, and pretrial injunction in internet-related litigation; and
Determination of burden of proof and damages, covering calculation of damages, authentication and identification of electronic evidence, and royalty-based damages for patent infringement.