China’s Supreme People’s Court (SPC) on Feb. 7 approved the establishment of China’s 25th specialized intellectual court (IP) court in the Wuxi Intermediate People’s Court of Jiangsu province, the country’s second richest province by gross domestic product (GDP) of 2021. With the approval, there will be 3 specialized IP courts located in this developed province.

Previously, IP cases filed in Wuxi city were heard and tried in IP tribunals of the Wuxi Intermediate People's Court and five district-level courts of the city except for some technology-type IP cases, as these courts didn’t maintain original jurisdiction to try technology-type IP cases. In 2017, technology-type cases filed in Wuxi city began to be heard at the Suzhou IP Court of Jiangsu province.

The Wuxi IP court to be newly created will hear criminal, civil, and administrative claims of patents, trademarks, anti-competitive practices, plant varieties, layout designs of integrated circuits, trade secrets, computer software copyrights, etc. as a trial court of first instance.

Statistics show that the demand for protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights has been growing in Wuxi city, which boasts a strongly innovative technogical ecosystem and a highly developed modern industrial system. An annual total of over 1,000 IP cases have been registered to be filed at Wuxi-based courts for years running. 173 IP-related criminal cases, 4,215 IP-related civil cases, and 6 IP-related administrative cases were filed at Wuxi-based courts between 2018 and 2020.