The Beijing Intellectual Property Court, established on November 6, 2014, is the first special court for handling intellectual property related matters. This court has jurisdiction over all the civil and administrative lawsuits on intellectual property rights which were previously administered by the intermediate people's courts in Beijing.
We have learned the following from recent meetings with the judges of Beijing Intellectual Property Court:
The Beijing Intellectual Property Court has accepted 7852 cases in total by November 20, 2015. Among these cases, 58 percent are trademark administrative cases, 13 percent are patent administrative cases, 14% are first instance civil cases and 15% are second instance civil cases.
A certain proportion of the administrative decisions made by the Trademark Review and Adjudication Board and the Patent Reexamination Board have been revoked by the Beijing Intellectual Property Court. Please see the following for details:
A slightly higher proportion of the administrative decisions made by the Trademark Review and Adjudication Board have been revoked than is the case with the administrative decisions made by the Patent Reexamination Board. In the year of 2015, about 11 percent of the decisions made by the Patent Reexamination Board have been revoked by the Beijing Intellectual Property Court, while about 16 percent of the decisions made by the Trademark Review Board have been revoked.
So far as the trademark administrative cases are concerned, about 30 percent of the first instance cases in which the Trademark Review and Adjudication Board lost could be attributed to the judgment on similar trademarks (This ratio was 29% in 2014, and 26% in 2013), and another 20 percent of the cases in which the Board lost are related to the judgment on similar goods/services (compared to a ratio of 16% in 2014 and 22% in 2013). It can be seen that there are some divergences between the court and the Trademark Review and Adjudication Board on whether the trademarks or the goods/services are similar.
