China’s top court released a national outline for the judicial protection of intellectual property at a press conference in Beijing on April 24.

It is the first time for the Supreme People’s Court of China (SPC) to make and issue an outline on intellectual property rights (IPR) protection, aiming at regulating the trial of cases.

Based on China’s successful experiences in protecting intellectual property in the past 30 years, the outline on the judicial protection of IPR between 2016 and 2020 mapped out the development goals of IPR judicial protection in an innovative and systematic way, including the establishment of a coordinated and open policy system, a long-term mechanism for international judicial cooperation on IPR and a reasonable damage compensating system, according to the conference.

Song Xiaoming, chief judge of SPC's IPR tribunal said that in 2016 the total number of IPR-related cases accepted by courts throughout the country had been increasingly growing, especially in the economically developed areas.

In 2016, the number of IPR-related first instance civil, administrative and criminal cases accepted by courts in China reached 152,072, an increase of 16.8 percent from the previous year, he added.