According to the statistics from Supreme People’s Court(SPC), Chinese courts at all levels received a total of 66,609 cases related to all kinds of intellectual property matters from January to June in 2014, an increase of 13.29% compared with the same period of the pervious year.
Of all the 66,609 IP cases, 5,695 were criminal cases, an increase of 22.68% compared with the same period in 2013; 54,187 were civil cases((including unfair competition cases), an increase of 3.89% compared with the 2013; and 6,727 were administrative cases increased by 2.37 times from the same period in 2013.
From January to June in 2014, criminal cases at first instance sharply increased. A total of 5,429 cases were handled by the courts at all level, the growth rate being 29.35% as compared with the pervious year. Of all the 5,429 criminal cases, 2,759 were related to IP infringement; 2,351 were related to violation of registered trademarks, accounting for 85.21% of the total IP infringement cases. A total of 47,583 civil cases were handled at first instance, of which 694 were related to unfair competition, 29,546 of which related to copyright disputes, a rise of 5.8% compared with 2013.
By the end of June this year, the courts at all level received a total of 5,640 IP administrative cases, an increase of 4.58% compared with the same period of 2013.