On November 21st, China held a press conference in Beijing, publishing that Chinese government has been taking more efforts to crackdown the infringement in recent years, upgrading IPR protection in the whole country. From January to September, China's relevant authorities investigated 112,700 IPR infringement cases of counterfeiting goods and selling shoddy goods, destroyed 1,938 dens of counterfeiting or shoddy goods. The police tracked down 16,100 criminal cases, and arrested nearly 20,000 suspects. The procuratorates prosecuted 12,200 cases involved 20,000 suspects. The courts have concluded 11,600 cases with effective judgments involving 15,700 criminals.

According to the press conference, there were four characteristics occurred to the fighting against infringement and counterfeiting. Firstly, the authorities focused on improving the long-term effective mechanism, and the system construction has seen a breakthrough. Secondly, special rectification has been focused and the high-pressure of fighting against infringement and counterfeiting was kept. Thirdly, criminal justice was strengthened and the number of investigated cases has gotten a sharp rise. Finally, channels of interaction and communication have been broadened and the website has been upgraded.

At the conference, officials from the Patent Affairs Administration Department under SIPO introduced the achievements made by China's IP authorities in IP law enforcement. In 2013, China's total administrative law enforcement cases on patents reached to more than 16,000, with a yearly increase of 79.8%. In addition, SIPO also actively launched special operations in the field of e-commerce patent rights enforcement, and especially, local IP offices directly assigned to the local e-commerce platform to explore the establishment of long-term mechanism for patent protection in the field of e-commerce. For example, IP offices in Zhejiang, Beijing and some other provinces have established cooperation mechanisms, respectively with e-commerce services such as Alibaba Group (China), Jingdong, Dangdang and others, and organized the law enforcement on infringement and counterfeiting for the complaints. 

(Source: China IP News)