China Celebrates World IP Day

The Supreme People's Court (SPC) released the 2015 IP Protection Report, along with details of 10 cases, just in time to mark World Intellectual Property Day. The main trends according to the IPR litigation statistics include:

• IP Cases continue to grow overall. First-instance IP cases in 2015 increased to 130,200, up 11.73% from 2014.  
• The amount of foreign IP cases are shrinking. In 2015, foreign related IP cases dropped 22% in absolute numbers from last year, despite an 7.2% increase in total number of IP cases. 
• Patent and licensing cases reached a total of 13,087 cases, showing a 22.1% increase from last year. Unfair competition cases, including those involving internet and software technology, increased 53.38%.

Of the 10 published cases, there were 4 patent cases, 4 trademark cases and 2 copyright cases. 2 of the 10 involved the ICT industry.