In 2015, people’s courts throughout the country had accepted 109,000 IPR-related first-instance civil cases and concluded 360,000 such cases. Protecting IPR in accordance with law and improving the legal system of protection of IPR has become an urgent task for China. On June 28, 2016, the Draft General Principles of Civil Law was submitted to the 21st meeting of the NPC Standing Committee for deliberation. The provisions on IPR protection in this draft law have become the focus of attention in China. Recently, two research fellows of CASS Law Institute, Professor Li Shunde and Professor Sun Xianzhong, were interviewed by the newspaper China Intellectual Property News about these recent developments in the field of IPR protection.
In the interview, Professor Li Shunde pointed out that the Draft General Principles of the Civil Law, by stressing that civil law subjects enjoy IPR in accordance with law, embodies the spirit of the relevant documents of CPC Central Committee and represents a forceful measure for further strengthening the protection of IPR and promoting the construction of the rule of law in China. The principle that civil law subjects enjoy IPR has long been enshrined in the laws of other countries, especially developed countries. The adoption of the General Principles of Civil Law is the first step in codification of the Chinese Civil Code, incorporating provisions on the protection of IPR into the Civil Code is an internationally accepted practice. The Draft General Principles of Civil Law provided comprehensive protection of not only traditional IPRs, such as patent, trademark, and copyright, but also new forms of IPR, such as traditional knowledge, data, information, network domain names, and biodiversity, which are of important realistic and profound historical significances.
Professor Sun Xianzhong pointed out that the continuous deepening of the reform and opening up and development of the market economy in China have created an objective need to adopt complete and systematic General Principles of Civil Law. Meanwhile, the achievements made by China in the construction of the rule of law and in the theoretical research on IPR have laid a good social and academic foundation for the adoption of the General Principles. The Civil Code involves many issues relating to IPR, property right, tort, family and marriage. It will provide a law for the whole society to go by and a unified legal basis for courts the adjudication of cases.