China’s Supreme People’s Court (SPC) has lately approved the establishment of China’s 26th specialized intellectual court (IP) court in the Xuzhou 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 4 specialized IP courts located in this developed province.

IP criminal, civil, and administrative cases filed in Xuzhou city were heard and tried in the IP tribunal of the Xuzhou Intermediate People's Court, which was established in 2011. In 2017, patent cases filed in Xuzhou city began to be heard in the Nanjing Intermediate People’s Court of Jiangsu province. Since 2016, the IP tribunal has handled 417 criminal cases and 6,545 civil cases consisting of 144 patent cases, 66 technical contract cases, 23 computer software copyright cases, 16 trade secret cases. 522 offenders have been subjected to punishment and fines totaling about 100 million yuan ($15 million) in IP criminal cases.

The Xuzhou IP court to be newly created will hear civil and administrative claims of invention patents, utility model patents, plant varieties, layout designs of integrated circuits, computer software copyrights, and anti-competitive practices filed in Xuzhou city, Suqian city, and Lianyungang city as a trial court of first instance, civil and administrative claims of trademarks filed in Xuzhou city as a trial court of first instance, and all criminal, civil, and administrative IP cases district-level people’s courts don’t maintain jurisdiction over.