The S&F law blog

Building on a massive crackdown on counterfeit goods this month, Chinese courts have accepted 40 percent more intellectual property cases over the last year. The number was a robust 42, 931 with verdicts rendered in 14,718.

The total value of disputed intellectual property was set at 1.2 billion dollars. Trade groups have long protested that China’s piracy consumer culture and production of counterfeit goods costs producers a massive, billions of dollars a year in lost potential sales.

The changing trend is highlighting the power and necessity of the Chinese courts. For example, more than half of the copyright cases involve content posted online, forcing the court to set new copyright precedents and standards.

The growing wave of litigation appears to be mainly between entities within China; of the 24, 724 copyright disputes heard in court, only 1,647 involved overseas plaintiffs, a declining number.

Source: NPR