The second plenary meeting of the 18th session of the Standing Committee of Shenzhen Municipal People's Congress reviewed and approved the Provisions of Shenzhen Special Economic Zone on Strengthening the Work of Intellectual Property Rights Protection  (hereinafter referred to as Provisions) recently which will be put into effect on July 1st of this year. The Provisions is the first regional rule introduced through legislation for comprehensively protecting all fields of intellectual property rights.    

The Provisions has thirty articles covering all fields of intellectual property rights, and it has made beneficial explorations and breakthroughs on the aspects concerning social management, connection among departments, practical manipulation of intellectual property right protection and so on.

Besides, the Provisions specifies building up a standard and high-effective work system of intellectual property rights protection through system innovation, promoting the work effectiveness and protective level through measures including strengthening the cooperation among various departments as well as the effective connection between administration and jurisdiction, and establishing an complete mechanism on intellectual property rights management and protection of all perspectives through system establishment, so as to ensure a smooth way of rights defending for the owner of intellectual property right.   

On the practical operation aspect, the Provisions has stated detailed regulations on the issues related to evidence collection, fixing, utilization, responsibility sharing and etc within the system frame for civil evidence in the existing laws, aiming to effectively maintain and remedy the legal rights of the owner. Besides, the Provisions has made detailed specifications on field inspection, inspection order, notarization preservation and etc during evidence collection and fixing.

The Provisions has also set regulations concerning technical secrets protection and put the factors such as research and development cost which shall be considered comprehensively during loss calculation in the rule. Besides, the relatively mature experiences on loss calculation in judicature practice has been promoted to a fixed legal rule, which states the calculation method for illegal business value during intellectual property rights violation and takes the illegal business value of the infringer as the loss amount of the technical secrets obligor in case that such loss amount of the technical secretes obligator is unable to account, thereby preventing the infringer from legal responsibility evasion due to non profits and avoiding no compensation for the right owner in case of low profits or even negative profit.   

The Provisions has established a scientific and fair loss remedying system; meanwhile, it increases the violation cost and responsibilities of the infringer and defines an intellectual property rights supervision system supported by the honest and credit archives system to make the infringer pay a higher social cost.   

In recent years, Shenzhen has obtained extraordinary effects on the aspects of intellectual property rights innovation, management, protection and utilization; besides, the patent application amount ranks the top of all the big and medium cities in China and the amount of patent application to foreign countries is also the largest in China in successive years. Moreover, the Shenzhen Municipal Party Committee and the Municipal Government has put forward the strategic goal of establishing Shenzhen into “A Power City of Intellectual Property Rights”, considering IPR protection as a key point of the intellectual property rights work, and implementing intellectual property rights protection of “all society, all perspectives and all process”. The establishment of the Provisions was also a key work in 2007 and was attached with great importance from the Shenzhen Municipal Party Committee and the Municipal Government as well as the Municipal People’s Congress, who adopted a series measures to ensure the quality and fast introduction of this rule. The implementation of the Provisions in Shenzhen will further perfect the intellectual property rights protection system, promote the effect of administrative law enforcement and supervision, strengthen intellectual property rights protection, help the right owner obtain a fairer remedy with high effect and build up a more excellent environment of legal system for science and techniques in Shenzhen.