In order to strengthen the criminal justice protection of intellectual property rights and to better serve the quality of economic and social development, the supreme people's court, the supreme people's procuratorate, on 24th day, issued an interpretation of the law applicable to criminal cases of infringement of intellectual property rights。
A total of 31 articles of judicial interpretation are divided into five sections on trademark offences, patent fraud offences, copyright offences, provisions relating to commercial secrecy offences and the commonality of intellectual property offences。
“there is still a certain degree of vulnerability to abuses in the area of intellectual property, where criminal behaviour is characterized by novelty, complexity and technological sophistication, and where the need for greater criminal protection of intellectual property rights is increasingly felt by creative actors in all sectors of society.” according to the vice-president of the supreme people's court, mr. Tokai。
To insist on strict protection under the law so that the rights and interests of the victims can be recovered and the perpetrators of the violations can pay a greater price。
Reduction of the criteria of incrimination - judicial interpretation reduces the criteria of incrimination based on de facto decriminalisation of trademark marking offences, as well as of forgery of patent, sale of tort replicas. For example, in the case of the offence of the sale of torts and replicas, the threshold for incrimination of “larger proceeds” was changed from “100,000 dollars” to “50,000 dollars”。
Increased incriminating circumstances - making the “value of the goods” “number of copies” of “value of the goods” such as “value of the sale” an incriminating circumstance for the offence of sale of torts and reproductions; reducing the threshold for incriminating incriminating offences in cases of repeated, long-term infractions for which criminal or administrative penalties have been imposed for two years。
Provision is made for heavy penalty provisions, which focus on combating socially harmful and subjectively malicious situations involving infringement of intellectual property rights, falsification of special goods during special periods, the registration of trademarks for services and refusal to surrender illicit proceeds without the manifestation of remorse。
Increase in the ceiling on the application of fines — amend the previous judicial interpretation to read “more than twice and less than ten times the amount of the fine” and increase the ceiling on the application of fines。
With regard to the imposition of penalties for commercial secrecy, the supreme french court's president, li sword, described the judicial interpretation of the “gravity” threshold for offences against commercial secrecy, i. E., the amount of damage caused or the amount of the proceeds of the offence “more than 300,000 yuan”. The amount was reduced to more than $100,000 after criminal or administrative penalties were imposed for violations of business secrets in two years。
With regard to strengthening the criminal justice protection of copyright, liu taizheng, deputy director of the office of the attorney-general of intellectual property rights, presented the judicial interpretation that further clarified the specific circumstances of the offence of violation of copyright and the sale of the crime of “other aggravating circumstances” for the crime of violation of reproduction. For example, for the offence of infringement of copyright, new offences were added “to more than 10,000 downloads”, with the “number of hits” retained as the criterion for criminalization, and the “50,000” was appropriately increased to “100,000”。
On the same day, nine typical cases of criminal protection of intellectual property rights were also published, dealing with contentious issues of application of the law that are common in practice and contributing to the accurate and correct application of judicial interpretation。
Authoritative data show that between 2013 and 2024, the people's courts and people's procuratorates at all levels of the country filed 691 criminal cases of violation of intellectual property rights and concluded 646 criminal cases of violation of intellectual property rights at first instance, amply demonstrating the strict protection of intellectual property rights in the country and the fight against the crime of infringement of intellectual property rights. (reporter fung jia-soon, zhu gao-sang)
