Recently, “i Think Tank” Counseling and Training Center of Intellectual Property Publication House under State Intellectual Property Office released the Research Report on Patent Infringement Lawsuits in China (1985~2013).

The Report indicated that the first patent infringement lawsuit occured in China in 1988 with a claimed amount of 5,000 yuan. The finished patent lawsuits had reached nearly 20,000 in China by December 2013 with over 2 billion of claimed amount in the first instance. The highest damages occurred in the utility model dispute between CHINT GROUP CORPORATION and Schneider Electric Low Voltage (Tianjin) Co., Ltd. The damages determined by the court in the first instance was 330 million and finally the settlement amount was as high as 157 million.

From the list of the courts received patent infringement lawsuits in the first instance in China, Guangzhou Intermediate Court in Guangdong Province topped the list with an account of 21.32%, which was 13% higher than the second one, Ningbo Intermediate Court in Zhejiang Province (8.47%). What was worthwhile to point out was that the First and Second Intermediate Court in Shanghai and Beijing were both within the list of top 10. “i Think Tank” considered basically there was a positive correlation between the list and the extent of economic development and quality of growth in these areas.

From the situation of representation of patent lawsuits, nearly 90% of the involved parties chose agencies in the lawsuits, which was much higher than the representation rate, 3%~30%, of other civil lawsuits. “i Think Tank” considered the reasons of such a very high representation rate were in one respect because usually patent lawsuits involved advanced technologies and complicated legal rules, which raised higher requirements on the involved parties; on the other respect, it was because mostly the involved parties were commercial entities in this type of cases and the success and loss of the cases would greatly influence their market, which made the involved parties pay more attention to the cases.

On June 5, Mr. Cui Guozhen, the director of the Counseling and Training Center of Intellectual Property Publication House released the Report on the 2014 Chinese Enterprise Intellectual Property Strategy Forum held by China Association of Patent Protection and made a lecture titled Interpretation of Chinese Patent Infringement Lawsuits Data.

Date: June 9, 2014                       
Source: People’s Net