The general offices of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and the State Council have jointly issued a directive titled "The Guideline on Strengthening Intellectual Property Rights Protection", raising the bar of IPR protection in the country.
The document puts forward goals of two phases.
As of 2022, China shall be able to effectively curb IPR infringement, and evidently overcome the difficulties met by right holders when enforcing their rights, namely limited access to discovery, burden of proof, protracted period of litigation, high costs, low damages;
As of 2025, public satisfaction with IPR protection in China shall reach a high level and stay there, protection capacity and system will be further improved, business environment of appreciating the value of knowledge will be optimized and the role of IPR system to encourage innovation will be fully played.
The document calls for speeding up the introduction of a punitive compensation system for infringements of patents and copyrights, strengthening the protection of trade secrets, confidential business information and their source codes, intensifying efforts to strike criminal misdeeds, studying to lower the incriminating threshold of IPR infringements and reinforcing the punishment for sentencing, exploring to set up pharmaceutical patent linkage system and pharmaceutical patent term compensation system and establishing the management standard to protect e-commerce platform.
http://english.cnipa.gov.cn/news/officialinformation/1144379.htm
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