Mr. Jiang Zhipei, presiding judge of IPR court of the Supreme People's Court, said that China's legal system of IPR protection has already completed on March 7 in a dialogue organized by relevant law websites.

Big progress made in IPR juridical protection after China's entry into WTO

According to Mr. Jiang, from 2002, when China accessed into WTO, till 2006, China's local courts had accepted a total of 54,321 cases involving IPR, and adjudicated 52,437cases, with an annual growth rate at 17.06% and 19.29% respectively. These cases coverage had also extended from covering trademark, copyright and patent right to internet copyright, network domain, provisional measures before suit, new plant varieties, identification of famous brands, design of integrated circuit layout, folk literature and art, geographical signs, non-infringement acknowledgement, franchise contracts and anti-monopoly.

Since 2001, the Supreme People's Court have declared and revised 18 judicial interpretations involving patent, trademark, copyright, new plant variety, design of integrated circuit layout, technology contract, unfair competition, computer network domain, IPR crime, provisional measures before suit, IPR preserving and division in case jurisdiction and trial. In addition, the Supreme Court also determined specific judicatory principles and standards in IPR protection by issuing instructive documents or other ways. These again enriched IPR legal system and solved some problems about law application in time.

Over five years since the entry into the WTO, China's IPR laws, regulations, judicial interpretations have constituted a comparatively complete IPR juridical protection system. Now, operation of the protection mechanism is normal, healthy and effective.

No negative impact on internet development by enforcing internet copyright protection

It seems to Mr. Jiang, the most distinctive feature of Internet is free, convenient, but we should protect these copyrights of those articles, photographs, movies, etc. so as to help improve the quality of these on internet, otherwise nobody is willing to publicize their good articles or pictures on Internet. We also have to consider the characteristics of internet and copyright protection, make out relevant regulations for charging and find the balancing point. The ideal result is more and more well-qualified products on internet and users are also satisfied.

Mr. Jiang Zhipei reminded the users that, according to the explanation from Supreme People's Court last July, reusing content from internet after paying was not regarded as infringement, but after last July, that won't be legal anymore. If the products are original or could be a complete works, the users have to be careful and ask for permission before reusing.

Five major measures to complete and unify the judicial protection standard

Mr. Jiang Zhipei said that we should unify standards in whole China so as to avoid different judgments to similar cases. The goal of achieving the unified law enforcement throughout the country to ensure the consistent law application is not an easy job, and need the Supreme People's Court to do something as follow:

1. to continue enhance the judicial identification of famous brands, and to issue the judicial interpretations concerning disputes between traditional shops' names and trademark rights at a proper time;

2. to further strengthen the judicatory supervision to the problems in law application, especially to those cases that different courts have different judgments to similar cases or even conflicted judgments, and to those of universal meaning in law application. In addition, the Supreme Court also need to clarify and unify the law application standards to those concerning patent or trademark infringements of common judicial review;

3. to enforce coordination among related cases, among different courts or various departments within one court, to pay great attention to the coordination of the result and processing for different cases with the same subject, right and infringement, in order to achieve the consistence or mutual coordination of action determination and compensation liability commitment.;

4. to construct the sound system of case instruction according the principles and demands of judicial system reform, strengthen the compiling and selection of typical cases. The local courts should report and deliver cases in time to the Supreme People's Court on demand.

5. to strengthen research, development and achievement transformation to effectively support and ensure the stipulation in judicial interpretations, work direction and judicatory practice solution in disposal of outstanding problems in judicatory practice, and those difficult, complicated and new cases.