Chinese Legal Developments: Counting the Cash

The Chinese government has realised the importance of the patent system in promoting the innovation of technologies and has taken certain measures and steps to enhance the protection of patent rights. The following are some trends and developments on patent protection in China in 2015.

Chinese entities and individuals are actively enforcing patent rights

According to the "White Paper on Judicial Protection of Intellectual Property Rights in 2015" released by the Supreme People's Court, the number of patent infringement civil cases of first instance reached 11,607, with a 20% increase over the number in 2014. Among those cases, 'foreign-related' disputes remain remarkably few since the number of all foreign-related civil IP cases decided at first instance in 2015 is just 1,327, a decrease of 22.6% compared with the 2014 number.