Intellectual Property Protection by Chinese Courts in 2018

V. Organising exchanges and cooperation and serving broader national and international interests

The intellectual property legal regime draws strength from international commonalities and responses to interactive effects from different regimes. The People’s Courts must actively engage in international and regional intellectual exchanges and cooperation, and must establish and improve its communication and exchange mechanisms for sharing information on judicial protection of intellectual property to facilitate deeper and objective understanding of the complete set-up of China’s intellectual property judicial protection regime by the different countries. China works to elevate its participation, discourse power and the flexibility to respond to its advantage to changes and challenges, and gives priority to building an environment conducive to trade and investment and creating the image of a responsible power.

(1) Strengthening international and regional collaboration and exchange 

Strengthening international judicial cooperation and exchange: The People’s Courts attaches great importance to strengthening exchanges with international organisations and countries around the world, and to showcasing the results of judicial protection of intellectual property in China and the abilities and accomplishments of Chinese intellectual property judges.

In November 2018, at the invitation of WIPO Director-General Francis Gurry, Vice President Tao Kaiyuan led a delegation for WIPO’s inaugural Intellectual Property Judges Forum in Geneva and her first meeting of with the WIPO Advisory Board of Judges. Delivering the only key note address at the forum, Justice Tao spoke on the topic “Steadfast in providing judicial protection of intellectual property; working together to create a great future for intellectual property”.

Her inspiring address received a positive and enthusiastic response from the audience, and key excerpts of her speech is quoted on WIPO’s website. WIPO and Director-General Gurry expressed their strong support and great recognition for China’s work on intellectual property. The visit provided opportunity for China to share its historical achievements in the judicial protection of intellectual property and to respond to respond to issues of concern, and in doing so, garner maximum understanding and receptiveness of China’s specificities in intellectual property protection from the international community. It was also an excellent platform which China used to make itself heard, contribute the Chinese wisdom and Chinese formula.

The EU-China Anti-Monopoly Judicial Seminar convened in Beijing. Co-organised by the Supreme People’s Court and European antimonopoly agencies, the seminar was attended by President of the General Court (EGC) of the Court of Justice of the European Union Marc Jaeger, Judge Schwarcz, European anti-monopoly agencies, and China representatives from the EU Commission. During this period, Vice President Tao Kaiyuan and Chief Judge Song Xiaoming met with EGC President Jaeger and his delegation. In addition, the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China today released its “European Business in China–Position Paper”, which highly commended China for establishing intellectual property courts.

The Supreme People’s Court also send representatives to participate in the Inaugural U.S.-China Digital Economy Forum, 140th Annual Meeting of the International Trademark Association, Symposium on Intellectual Property Advanced Seminar for ASEAN+3 2018, the 8th OECD/KPC Competition Workshop for Asia-Pacific Judges, 8th OECD/KPC Competition Workshop for Asia-Pacific Judges and the ICC Commission on Intellectual Property (Fall Conference). It also continued to participate in the negotiations of the Hague Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters, and was involved in the 4th Special Commission meeting.

Cooperation with Europe continued to be very close, as the court also sent representatives to participate in the 21th meeting of the EUChina IP Working Group. Both China and Europe agreed to strengthen their intellectual property dialogue and to deepen cooperation in intellectual property protection. In November, under the China-EU IP Cooperation Project “IP Key China”, a delegation of intellectual property judges from China went on study visits to Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg. This was a programme aimed at fostering exchanges with the intellectual property-related policy-makers and judiciaries of European authorities to help them understand the level of judicial protection given to intellectual property in China and China’s position of giving equal protection to local and foreign rightsholders, which will give China greater international influence. It will also help us learn and adapt advanced legislative and judicial experiences to further strengthen our intellectual property adjudication system and develop more robust intellectual property protection systems and mechanisms, which will elevate our professional competence in intellectual property adjudication.

Strengthening inter-judicial cooperation and exchange: 

First, mutual visits and exchange with Hong Kong and Macao. In October 2018, Vice President Tao Kaiyuan led a delegation of eight to visit the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal and the Court of Final Appeal of Macau at their invitation. This was the first time that mainland and Hong Kong judges held a seminar on the topic of adjudication in Hong Kong. The discussions have enabled the judges from both sides to resonate in many areas as men of the law. The delegation also visited judiciaries in Hong Kong SAR and Macao SAR to confirm the mutual visit mechanism for their judges, as well as participated in intellectual property adjudication seminars in Hong Kong and Macao. The “Arrangement on Reciprocal Recognition and Enforcement of Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters by the Courts of the Mainland and of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region” signed with Hong Kong’s Legislative Council provides for the recognition and enforcement of intellectual property-related civil judgements and serves the development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area.

Second, mutual visits and exchange with Taiwan. Between 15 and 21 May, Chief Judge Song Xiaoming visited Taiwan in the capacity of executive director of the China Association of Judges under the invitation of the Taiwan Law Society. The 12-person delegation visited the Taiwan Intellectual Property Court to study the set-up and operations of the specialised court, and other systems relating to the judicial protection of intellectual property, such as “three-in-one”

adjudication and technology investigators. With the joint efforts of all members of the delegation, the study visits and exchanges yielded positive results and met the objectives of the trip. On 13 December, Justice Song met with Justice Sung-Mei Hsiung from the Taiwan Intellectual Property Court, who was invited to visit by the China Association of Judges. Both sides discussed intensively on issues such as punitive damages, patent litigation agent, and the source and makeup of technology investigators.

(2) Organised master class on intellectual property adjudication to strengthen cooperation with WIPO 

Organised as a collaborative effort between the Supreme People’s Court and WIPO, the inaugural “Master Class on IP Adjudication” was held on 21-23 August 2018 at the National Judges College in Beijing. This judicial training was the most important and the highest level, and where the discussion topics of which were the most in-depth. Chief Justice and President of the Supreme People’s Court Zhou Qiang specially met with Deputy Director-General of WIPO Wang Binying, Legal Counsel and head of the WIPO legal team Frits Bontekoe, and representative of the students and instructors of the master class. The class consisted of 7 lectures, 24 formal students and 15 observers from China, the United States, Germany, Australia, Belgium, Korea, Singapore, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Moldova, Brazil, Latvia, Malaysia and South Africa. More than 40 judges from 15 countries gathered here to learn and share, using English as the only language of communication.

Chief Justice Zhou noted that China’s courts engage closely with WIPO and collaboration between them has been fruitful. The success of this master class is a major outcome of this collaboration, and is instrumental in encouraging the judges from different countries to engage with each other more, and in facilitating judicial protection of intellectual property in different countries. This success also marks the advancement of the cooperation between the Supreme People’s Court and WIPO to new heights, and opens up avenues for making known to the world China’s achievements in the judicial protection of intellectual property, and with widened international exposure, China’s intellectual property judges will truly become more international in their legal knowledge and perspectives.

photo from: Chinese Court