On 22 Apr. 2024, China’s Supreme People’s Court (SPC) published a report titled “Intellectual Property Protection by Chinese Courts in 2023” (中國法院知識產權司法保護) in both Chinese and English, and released the Top 10 Intellectual Property (IP) Cases and 50 Typical IP Cases heard by Chinese courts in 2023.
According to the report, the courts nationwide accepted 544,126 IP cases of various types and concluded 544,112 cases in 2023, up 3.41% and 0.13%, respectively, from 2022.
In 2023, punitive damages were applied in 319 cases throughout the country, a year-on-year increase of 117%, with the total amount awarded reaching CNY 1.16 billion. For example, in the case involving trademark infringement and unfair competition against “PANPAN” (盼盼, one of China’s top door manufacturers), the SPC applied 4 times punitive damages for maliciously parasitic use of similar trademarks while knowing the popularity and influence of others’ registered trademarks, and ruled the defendant to compensate over 100 million yuan.
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The Top 10 Influential Cases and Top 50 Typical Cases cover various fields including core technology innovation in key fields, digital economy, and seed industry. For more information, please see our post “SPC Releases Top 10 Influential IP Cases of 2023”.
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Contributors: CJO Staff Contributors Team
