Legal Support, Reduced Costs Promised For IPR

While pledging to give stronger legal support to well-known works, Chinese courts are also determined to maintain the order of registered trademarks, so as to reduce the protection costs for IP rights' owners, an official from China's top court said.

"We'll make greater efforts to protect the legitimate rights and interests of names and characters in popular works, so as to improve the quality and effectiveness of IP protection," Lin Guanghai, chief judge of No 3 Civil Adjudication Tribunal, a division that specializes in handling IP cases with the SPC, said on Thursday.

He said that the move is to implement an IP cooperative protection guideline jointly issued by the top court and the CNIPA in February, calling for all courts to strictly abide by the Trademark Law and the Anti-Unfair Competition Law to help innovators reduce their costs in protecting IP rights.