On January 27, 2015 State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO)
published a new draft of an improved set of rules concerning
administrative enforcement of patents for public comments. China
has in fact a unique system of IPR enforcement, in that a right
holder can chose to have his patent rights enforced by a civil
court or by a special administrative body under SIPO's
supervision. The administrative enforcement system is generally
faster and less expensive than civil proceedings; however, it
cannot issue injunctions and grant damage compensation claims. It
is evident that SIPO's administrative enforcement of patents
has been conceived to reduce the burden of court workload by
freeing them of lesser kinds of patent infringements, i.e.
infringements of utility models and design patents or infringements
with low monetary value. One major downside of administrative
enforcement of patents is the low deterring force of its decisions.
In fact, the only remedy that can bring an
