Overseas firms dominate in IPR suits

Shanghai's courts have ruled in favor of overseas companies in more than 80 percent of the intellectual property rights (IPR) cases that the courts ruled on from 2009 to 2013, the city's highest court said Wednesday.

"Foreign parties win most of their intellectual property rights cases because most of them are multinational companies that have a lot of experience and resources to devote to intellectual property rights cases," said Zhu Dan, a judge on the intellectual property court at Shanghai Higher People's Court.

These multinational companies usually have teams of employees and lawyers devoted to protecting their intellectual property rights, so they are more likely to win when they go to court. From 2009 to 2013, Shanghai's courts settled 1,167 intellectual property rights cases that involved at least one party from Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan or a foreign country, according to Shanghai Higher People's Court.

Over those five years, the court issued a verdict in 38 percent of the cases, compared with 21 percent of the cases that only involved parties from the Chinese mainland. The court interpreted the figures to mean that foreign parties prefer the courts to rule on their cases to better protect their interests.

In 99 percent of the lawsuits involving an overseas party, the overseas party filed the lawsuit, which indicated to the court that overseas companies are more aware of how to use the judicial system to protect their intellectual property rights. Most of the plaintiffs from Western countries were from Germany, France or the US.

Of the intellectual property infringement cases heard in local courts, more than 40 percent were trademark infringement cases, the court said. Patent infringement cases accounted for 25 percent of the cases, and copyright infringement cases made up another 24 percent. The cases involved 1.76 billion yuan ($282 million) in claims.

In one case, Microsoft Corp sued a local company for 100 million yuan for violating its software copyright, the court said. After going through court-sponsored mediation, the local company agreed to pay Microsoft 36 million yuan to settle the lawsuit.

The number of intellectual property cases handled by local courts has grown annually by 11.5 percent over the last few years, the court said.