China's highest prosecution: the number of criminal cases involving intellectual property infringement arrested by the prosecution increased by 30% in 2019
China News Agency, Beijing, April 25 (Reporter Zhang Su) In 2019, Chinese prosecutors approved the arrest of 4,346 criminal cases involving intellectual property rights infringement, 7,430 people, up 31.5% and 24.3% year-on-year; They were up 21.9% and 32.2% respectively.
On the eve of World Intellectual Property Day, China ’s Supreme People ’s Procuratorate notified the above data on the 25th and released the “2019 Procuratorate Protection of Intellectual Property Typical Cases”, including Shanghai Wangmou and other counterfeit registered trademark cases, and Guangdong Limoumou ’s illegal manufacturing of registered trademark logos. There are 18 cases in total. Seven of the cases involved foreign brand protection.
In response to a reporter ’s question, Zheng Xinjian, Director of the Fourth Procuratorate of the Supreme People ’s Procuratorate of China, pointed out that in the past 20 years, the number of IPR infringement cases in China has risen sharply. In 2019 this number increased to more than 11,000 people, an increase of about 56 times. " Judging from the crimes involved, trademark infringement crimes account for more than 80% of all intellectual property crimes every year, especially in the past 5 years, the proportion of trademark infringement crimes has risen to about 90%.
Zheng Xinjian believes that with the sustained and rapid economic and social development, intellectual property rights with high gold content are coveted by criminals. At the same time, the public's awareness of intellectual property rights is gradually increasing. In particular, companies have a strong desire to protect their intellectual property rights by punishing infringements. "A considerable part of the cases handled by procuratorates are triggered by corporate reports."
In addition to stepping up efforts to crack down on IPR infringement crimes, the prosecution is also performing its legal supervision function, promptly correcting problems such as unmoved cases, unfounded cases, and unfair judgments. In 2019, under the supervision of the procuratorial organ, the public security organ filed a case to investigate 111 139 IPR-infringing crimes, and the public security organ cancelled 105 145 cases; the procuratorial organ decided to file 58 anti-infringement criminal cases in the court and changed the sentence to 52 .
Since December 2019, the Supreme People ’s Procuratorate has also deployed a one-year pilot project to inform the rights holders of the criminal cases of intellectual property rights infringement of intellectual property rights in Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, and Guangdong at three levels, requiring the procuratorial organ Intellectual property crime cases and criminal cases involving the production and sale of fake and inferior commodities involving intellectual property rights, within 10 days from the date of accepting the examination and prosecution, take the initiative to inform the right holders of their litigation rights. Zheng Xinjian said that from the current effect, this move provides more adequate protection of the procedural rights of the right holders, significantly saves the cost of rights protection, and at the same time effectively improves the quality of case handling. (Finish)