Chinese courts will impose greater penalties on intellectual property rights (IPR) violations, to allow the judiciary to play a leading role in the country's overall IPR protection strategy, a senior court official said on Friday.

Courts will use improved ways for parties who have had their IPR violated to receive compensation through civil trials, said Xi Xiaoming, vice-president of the Supreme People's Court.

"We should make sure that we can enable IPR holders to get enough compensation, which should deprive the infringer of any benefit and make the consequences for their actions dire," Xi told a national work conference on intellectual property-related trials.

Compensations should also include the costs that IPR holders have incurred to maintain their rights, the amount of which could be calculated separately from the compensation given by court rulings, he said.

Similarly, Xi said courts will also adopt more "provisional measures" prior to final verdicts on IPR cases to protect victims.

The Chinese government in June issued the Compendium of National Intellectual Property Strategy, pledging to continue improving IPR trials and the litigation system for judicial protection to play a leading role.

Courts will also carry out more reforms to improve efficiency for IPR protection, the official said.

He called on all courts to look into all cases that meet with litigation requirements in a timely manner.

"Agents can have the right to sue as long as they are clearly entrusted by right holders, no matter from home or abroad," Xi said.

"It will not be mandatory to get signed letters from the rights holders as required in the past," he said, adding that such a requirement had wasted much time in a number of cases related to foreign parties.

As required by the compendium, courts will also establish special tribunals to handle civil, administrative or criminal cases involving intellectual property more aggressively, Xi said.

Nine intermediate people's courts and 14 district or county-level courts nationwide have established such tribunals, mostly in provinces seeing an increasing number of IPR cases such as Shanghai, Guangdong, Jiangsu, Shandong and Fujian, said Kong Xiangjun, deputy chief of the Supreme People Court's IPR Tribunal.

"The reform has proven to be effective in optimizing the allocation of judicial resources and simplifying remedial procedures," Kong said.

The Yuzhong district people's court of Chongqing municipality is set to have the first such tribunal at district-level in western China today, officials said.

More efforts will also be made to centralize jurisdiction over cases involving patents or those of a highly technical nature, as well as to explore setting up courts of appeal for cases involving intellectual property issues, Xi said.

In the first 10 months of this year, courts heard 20,806 civil IPR cases, up 37 percent year-on-year.

From 2001 to last year, courts concluded 74,200 civil IPR cases, an average growth of 23 percent year-on-year. In 2007 alone, courts concluded 2,684 criminal IPR cases, in which 4,322 defendants were convicted.

In June of last year, the SPC awarded 8.3 million yuan ($1.2 million) to Japan's Yamaha Motor in a trademark infringement case against Zhejiang Huatian, one of China's largest motorcycle makers.

(China Daily November 29, 2008)