Increasing Damages In IP Infringement Litigation In China

Back in the 2000s, if you were an IP rights holder, damages expectable from an infringement litigation possibly did not exceed $20,000 in average. A variety of reasons led to the situation, including insufficient ways to collect evidence, limited experience in handling IP infringement actions and the depth and breadth of the IP rights.

As time goes by, the situation has changed, and recently it has reached a climax as a recent batch of typical IP cases were issued by the Supreme People's Court (the SPC) of China, RMB1.59 billion damages were awarded to the owner of trade secret of manufacturing vanillin, the most widely used spice in food industries, which is the highest damages affirmed by the SPC. The record is like to be broken soon because the RMB1.59 billion were just a part of damages suffered by the plaintiff up to the end of 2017 while the rights holder may apply for additional damages for the infringement occurred after 2017 as the Unfair Competition