Recently, a legal report on Chinese e-commerce from 2011 to 2012 was released by China e-Commerce Research Center (CECRC). The report provided some figures of legal disputes encountered by e-commerce. The figure shows that 61.54% of the legal disputes were associated with intellectual property rights, a ratio much higher than other kinds of legal disputes.
Copyright, patent and trademark are the major intellectual property rights related to e-commerce disputes. According to CECRC, these disputes are more likely to happen in e-commerce due to the difficulties in controlling the transmission and in locating the geographical areas. Other difficulties are evidence collection, location of infringers, and jurisdiction.