During the Action Month of Strengthening IPR Judicial Protection recently, Shanghai Higher People's Court holds a special symposium to solicit opinions and suggestions from all walks of life on how to strengthen the work of hearing IP cases, protect IPRs and promote independent innovation. Deputies to Shanghai Municipal People's Congress, members of Shanghai Political Consultative Conference, senior enterprise executive officials, IP experts and scholars and people of related law-enforcement departments attend the symposium.

Participants fully affirm the achievements made by Shanghai courts in strengthening IPR judicial protection, improving the levels of trying IP cases, exploring the trying modes for IP tribunals to handle IP civil, criminal and administrative cases, and safeguarding IPR holders' legal rights and interests. Meanwhile, participants also note that Shanghai court setups should make efforts to foster a batch of high-level judges in IP field, handle a batch of high-quality IP cases and make a batch of achievements in IPR protection under the circumstance of continuous emerging of various IP-related problems and new types of disputes, accelerating the program of "four taking-the-leads" (taking the lead in transforming economic growth mode, taking the lead in improving independent innovation capacity, taking the lead in promoting reform and opening up and taking the lead in constructing the harmonious socialism society), constructing Shanghai into the international economic, financial, trading and shipping centers, coping with international financial crisis, shifting risks to opportunities and taking measures to promote the programs of "two ensuring" (ensuring the basic living standards of laid off workers of state-owned enterprises and ensuring the basic living standards of retired workers) in Shanghai.

At the symposium, participants put forward suggestions and fully discuss on topics such as measures of reducing the costs of safeguarding IPRs and increasing those of right infringements, strengthening interpretation and publicity of typical IP cases in various forms and fields, making joint efforts with related governmental departments in solving the problems in enforcement, coping with the challenges of hard and new cases in innovation spirits and launching regular researches with academic circle to resolve new IP problems.

Shanghai court setups launch the Action Month of Strengthening IPR Judicial Protection with a theme of "protecting rights according to law and stimulating innovation" in November and series of activities such as organizing citizens to attend court trials as visitors, trying case in a centralized way and facilitating media reports are in progress orderly.