China News Network, 4 April -- The Supreme People's Procuratorate held a press conference on 26 April. Gong Ming, a deputy ministerial-level full-time member of the Supreme People's Procuratorate and Procuratorial Commission, revealed at the meeting that from January 26 to March this year, procuratorial organs across the country prosecuted more than 2022,1 cases and more than 3,7300 people for intellectual property infringement crimes.
Gong Ming introduced that in the past year, the procuratorial organs have continued to promote the comprehensive performance of intellectual property rights prosecution, the quality and efficiency of professional case handling have been continuously improved, and the role of procuratorial work services in ensuring innovation-driven and high-quality economic and social development has been further revealed.
Procuratorial organs handle cases with high quality and efficiency, and strengthen judicial protection of intellectual property rights. Specifically, it is manifested in four aspects:
The first is to punish crimes of infringing intellectual property rights in accordance with the law to form a strong deterrent. From January 2022 to March this year, procuratorial organs across the country prosecuted more than 1,3 cases of intellectual property infringement and more than 7300,1 people, and equally protected the legitimate rights of domestic and foreign rights holders in accordance with the law. We have strengthened coordination and cooperation with public security organs, promptly put forward investigation suggestions for major, difficult, and complex cases, made good use of our own supplementary investigation functions, improved the evidence chain, and improved the quality of cases. In view of the profit-making characteristics of crimes infringing intellectual property rights, when making sentencing recommendations, increase the application of fines and penalties in accordance with law, promptly recover illegal gains, prevent criminals from profiting from criminal activities, and effectively curb crimes by depriving illegal economic benefits.
The second is to strengthen the legal supervision function of criminal procedure and safeguard judicial justice. Strengthen legal oversight of situations where administrative organs should transfer leads on crimes of infringing intellectual property rights but do not transfer them, and where public security organs should file cases but do not file cases. From January 2022 to March this year, it was recommended that administrative organs transfer more than 1 suspected criminal suspects to the public security organs; Supervise the filing of more than 3 cases by public security organs and the withdrawal of more than 550 cases; More than 520 criminal suspects were arrested by public security organs, and more than 410 co-defendants were transferred for examination and prosecution by the public security organs. Promptly transfer leads to cases that do not constitute a crime or are not pursued for criminal responsibility, but are suspected of administrative violations, promptly transfer them to the administrative organs for handling, and promote the two-way connection of criminal punishment to avoid loopholes in punishment.
The third is to supervise civil administrative litigation and ensure the uniform and correct implementation of the law. Strengthen supervision of effective judgments on civil administration of intellectual property rights, as well as trial and enforcement activities. From January 2022 to March this year, more than 1,3 cases of supervision of intellectual property civil administrative litigation were handled, and the number of cases continued to increase, and protests or retrial procuratorial suggestions were filed for cases with errors. For example, in the "Mona Lisa" trademark administrative dispute case protested by the Supreme People's Procuratorate and the "Yisheng Tang'an" trademark invalidation administrative dispute case protested by the Beijing Municipal Procuratorate, the courts have adopted the protest opinions and revised the judgments in the retrial, thus promoting the unification of the legal application standards in the field of trademark authorization and confirmation on similar goods and similar trademarks.
The fourth is to establish and improve comprehensive performance methods and mechanisms, and strengthen comprehensive protection. In handling intellectual property cases, local procuratorial organs carry out "four investigations in one case", simultaneously reviewing whether criminal offenses, civil infringements, administrative violations and public interest litigation leads are involved, and promoting the integrated performance of duties. Actively carry out criminal incidental civil litigation in cases of intellectual property infringement crimes, reduce the burden of rights holders filing separate civil lawsuits, reduce the cost of rights protection, and improve judicial efficiency. In carrying out special work on punishing malicious litigation of intellectual property rights, focus on the issue of false litigation, strengthen the transfer of criminal leads, and realize the combination of civil supervision and criminal prosecution. For example, the Keqiao District Procuratorate of Shaoxing City, Zhejiang Province, used big data model screening to find supervision clues, supervised and corrected 62 false litigation cases of flower copyright and prosecuted 4 people for fraud.