context: In the past three years, especially in 2023, the number of criminal and civil IP cases handled by procuratorial organs increased significantly, in line with the CCP Central Committee's deployment to strengthen IP protection. To escort the development of new productive forces, the SPP (Supreme People's Procuratorate) claims a greater focus on the protection of commercial secrets and other types of IPRs in future industries.
The SPP (Supreme People's Procuratorate) held a press conference on deepening comprehensive duty performance on IP procuratorial work to boost the development of new productive forces on 25 Apr 2024.
Gong Ming 宫鸣 SPP deputy procurator general introduced that to promote the development of new productive forces, the procuratorates will strengthen efforts in the following three aspects, specifically
- serving the healthy development of future industries
- focusing on strengthening judicial protection of IPRs in AI, biotechnology, green energy, information and communication and other future industries
- severely penalising infringers to deter them from committing offences again, while at the same time speeding up the handing process to avoid continuous damage to the legitimate rights and interests of the right-holders
- increasing judicial protection for scientific researchers in future industries
- handling cases involving scientific research funds and high-tech talents in a prudent manner
- creating a good atmosphere that encourages innovation and tolerates failure
- strengthening comprehensive protection of scitech innovation
- penalising offences against commercial secrets and key core technologies in accordance with the law
- balancing the protection of the innovation of enterprises with labourers' legitimate rights
- preventing and correcting the use of criminal means to interfere in economic disputes
- strengthening anti-monopoly and anti-unfair competition procuratorial work
- increasing supervision of civil and administrative proceedings involving patents, technical secrets, new plant varieties, integrated circuit layout designs, etc. to promote the uniformity of judicial judgment standards
- penalising offences against commercial secrets and key core technologies in accordance with the law
- strengthening the distillation of case handling rules for high-tech cases
- cases involving new technologies such as AI and blockchain
- IPR attributes, ownership and infringement determination
- calculation of the amount of illegal business income
- substantial similarity determination in copyright infringement disputes
- determination of whether the technical information in question is the same or equivalent to other's trade secret