Foreign disputes surge at capital’s IP court

Most of the foreign intellectual property disputes heard by the Beijing IP Court last year involved United States comapanies, a report by a third-party IP team said on Friday.

From the 5,432 cases the court handled last year, 5,022 verdicts were analyzed by IP House, a research group of more than 30 IP professionals set up in 2014. It found that 1,095 related to foreign litigants.

The Beijing IP Court is one of the three specialized courts in China that deals only with intellectual property lawsuits. The other two are in Shanghai and Guangzhou.

Some IP disputes and their verdicts remain sealed by law for privacy reasons privacy, "which is why about 400 cases were not included in our analysis," said Pu Xiang, CEO of IP House.

More than a one-fifth of the IP cases involved foreigners, the report said, and the propostion is still rising in the capital.

That makes foreign IP disputes a major part of the IP case hearings in the city, Pu said.

Of the foreign cases, 395 involved US companies, 2.7 times more than those relating to Germany, which stood No 2 on the list, it said.

Of the cases involving the US businesses, 346 were administrative IP disputes, dealing for instance with brands or patents, it said.

Chen Jinchuan, vice-president of the Beijing IP Court, said the US is a country that pays close attention to IP protection and invests heavily in innovation.

"So US companies apply in China for IP protection more often," Chen said.

"The growing number of applications from the US also shows that China is more attractive to that country and its businesses need development in China," he added.

IP cases were concluded within 125 days on average by the the court in Beijing, the report said.

Huang Hui, a lawyer in Beijing, said that the limited number of judges at the court should be applauded for being able to handle such a surge in IP cases.

"The amount of time we need to hear an IP case, in fact, is shorter than in European countries, where it takes about 18 months to deal with such disputes," Huang said, adding that there are also fewer IP cases handled in Europe than in China.