The Beijing High People's Court Wednesday initiated a website where people can freely search and review the documents of judicial decisions on intellectual property rights (IPR) cases handled by the courts in Beijing at various levels.

Zhu Jiang, vice-president of the Beijing High People's Court, said all of the judicial documents of the first and final judgments on IPR cases will be uploaded to the website - bjgy.chinacourt.org - covering categories such as patents, trademarks, copyright, improper competition and technical contracts.

Zhu said his court will upload the judgment documents every month, and if a case is very important and has drawn wide social concerns, his court will publish its judicial decisions within two days after the delivery of the judgment.

"The new move will increase judicial transparency and create a new channel for people to supervise the courts' operations. Meanwhile, it will facilitate IPR researchers to get first-hand information and help common people learn more about IPR," Zhu said.

Zhang Lumin, president of the third civil court under the high court, which is specifically for IPR cases, said her court will publish all of the IPR case judgments as of this year, while the judicial documents before this year will not to be available on the Internet.

But she said her court has published two books which contain many important and eye-catching IPR cases since 1993.

Other judicial decisions apart from IPR cases will also be opened to the public in the near future, according to sources with the court.

(Xinhua News Agency November 6, 2003)