According to the SPP's case management office, approximately 16,000 individuals were involved in IP infringement cases during this period, marking a 21.5% increase from the previous year. This includes over 1,800 individuals implicated in complex cases such as trade secret theft.
In 2023, punitive compensation was applied in 319 cases, marking a 117% year-on-year increase, with a total compensation of 11.6 billion yuan, a 3.5-fold increase compared to the previous year.
Market supervision departments at all levels inspected 79,000 units involved in charging fees for enterprises, imposing fines of 430 million yuan and returning 2.16 billion yuan to enterprises. These supervision departments also handled 12,496 unfair competition cases in 2023.
Market regulatory authorities across China have investigated and dealt with 1,209 internet unfair competition cases since the beginning of 2023, according to news released on Thursday.
Baidu has filed lawsuits against Apple over fake copies of its Ernie bot app available on Apple's app store. The company's artificial intelligence powered Ernie bot, launched last month, has been regarded as China's closest answer to the U.S.-developed chatbot ChatGPT.
