Courts in Beijing have properly tried cases involving new transactions, new models, and new forms of business in accordance with the law, strengthened the protection of data rights, digital property rights and personal information, and tried new types of cases in accordance with the law, including China's first unfair competition case related to voice instructions of intelligent products and a bitcoin mining contracts case, giving full play to the role of trial in stimulating innovation and improving order through regulation.
On January 8th, Kou Fang, President of Beijing High People's Court, mentioned the above information while addressing the fifth session of the 15th Beijing Municipal People's Congress.
Leverage the Role of Trial in Stimulating Innovation and Improving Order
Kou Fang said that the courts in Beijing served in accordance with laws to contribute to building Beijing into an international center for science and technology innovation and a benchmark city for global digital economy. It has deepened reform and innovation in the field of intellectual property adjudication by formulating the Guidelines on the Evidence Rules for Intellectual Property Civil Litigation, strengthening judicial protection of intellectual property rights for key technologies, and expanding the availability of punitive damages. A total of 76,530 intellectual property cases were concluded. In recent years, the average amount of compensation in patent cases in Beijing has increased from 420,000 yuan to 790,000 yuan, and the trial efficiency of invention patent cases in the first instance ranks first in the world.
Courts in Beijing properly tried cases involving new transactions, new models, and new forms of business in accordance with the law, strengthened the protection of data rights, digital property rights and personal information, and tried new types of cases, including China's first unfair competition case related to voice instructions of intelligent products and a bitcoin mining contracts case in accordance with the law, giving full play to the role of trial in stimulating innovation and improving order. Beijing has strengthened anti-monopoly and anti-unfair competition trials and tried monopoly cases where merchants were forced to pick only one platform to conduct business to protect the legitimate rights and interests of the employees and consumers and prevent the disorderly expansion of capital.
Taking China's first unfair competition dispute related to voice instructions of intelligent products as an example. Beijing Zile Technology Co., Ltd. (Zile), a manufacturer that produced Du YaYa, a learning machine, used "小杜" (pronounced as "Xiaodu" in Chinese) to refer to the machine, and used "xiaodu xiaodu" as the voice instruction to activate and operate the machine. Baidu Online Network Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd. (Baidu) sued both Zile and its distributor, Beijing Jingwei Zhicheng E-commerce Co., Ltd. (Jingwei Company) to the Beijing Haidian District People's Court, requiring the two defendants to stop the conduct involved in the case, and requiring Zile to eliminate the impact and compensate for economic loss and reasonable expenses of CNY 3 million.
The Court held that considering the popularity and influence of "小度" (pronounced as "Xiaodu" in Chinese) and "xiaodu xiaodu", and the fact that the Xiaodu smart speaker and the Du YaYa learning machine are similar products in terms of function, audience and sales channels, Zile's accused behavior is subjectively malicious and clearly likely to mislead relevant people into thinking that there may be specific links such as product R&D, technical support, authorized cooperation, etc., between the two products and their related services, thus confusing these two products. The Court ordered Zile to eliminate the impact of its unfair competition and compensate Baidu for economic loss of CNY 500,000 and reasonable expenses of CNY 50,000 in the first instance.
Efficiently Resolve Foreign-related Commercial Disputes and Promote Higher Level Opening-up
Kou Fang said that courts in Beijing have contributed to the city's "two zones" development in accordance with the law. Built with a high starting point and high standards, the Beijing Financial Court has actively promoted the innovation of financial trial systems and mechanisms, worked with relevant financial regulatory agencies in establishing a "Smoke Index" for the financial judicial risk early warning system, and concluded 179 cases with the value exceeding 100 million yuan. Active efforts have been made to request the Supreme Court to formulate opinions on providing judicial service guarantees for Beijing's "two zones" building and promote the orderly implementation of 23 tasks.
The Beijing Financial Court, since its establishment, has strengthened the communication and cooperation with relevant financial regulatory agencies and realized the connection and sharing between the Beijing "Smoke Index" monitoring system and the trial system, giving risk alert to judges at various stages such as case filing, trial, and execution through the quantification and graded early warning of financial risks.
In addition, Beijing established the International Commercial Court on December 28, 2021, which helps meet the needs for the diversified resolution of international commercial disputes and efficiently resolve foreign-related commercial disputes. Its establishment has also helped create a market-oriented, law-based, and international business environment to build Beijing into the center for international exchanges and promote higher level opening-up. Beijing has established a one-stop diversified dispute resolution center for international commercial disputes and Universal Beijing Resort. It has also launched China's first integrated platform for diversified dispute resolution of financial cases, which stores 40,000 certificates online by using blockchain technology and has successfully mediated 6,315 cases. Hence, it was hailed by the Ministry of Commerce as the "Best Practice Case of the Integrated National Demonstration Zone for Opening up the Services Sector".
The one-stop diversified dispute resolution center of Universal Beijing Resort provides one-stop judicial services covering legal risk assessment, pre-litigation mediation, judicial confirmation, case filing and registration, material transfer, inquiry and consultation, and contacting judges, mainly for personal injury and property damage compensation disputes between tourists in the resort, contractual disputes between tourists and related businesses and companies, and other disputes taking place in the resort in need of the dispute resolution center's mediation.
Kou Fang said that Beijing has been improving the business environment in accordance with the law. Beijing has strengthened the judicial protection of property rights and maintained a fair, transparent and predictable market order in accordance with the law. A total of 155,852 commercial cases were concluded, and three cases were selected by the Supreme People's Court as the "Typical Civil and Commercial Cases for Promoting the High-quality Development of the Private Sector". Beijing has strengthened the coordination between governments and courts in dealing with bankruptcy cases and leveraged the important role of bankruptcy trials in improving the rescue and exit mechanisms of market entities.
With stronger awareness that protecting intellectual property is protecting innovation, procuratorates in Beijing have also promoted the centralized and unified performance of procuratorial functions over intellectual property, prosecuted 240 people for crimes of intellectual property infringement, and handled 232 related civil and administrative procuratorial supervision cases. To meet the needs of intellectual property protection concerning the development of "three science cities and one hi-tech area" as the main platform for innovation, Universal Beijing Resort and time-honored enterprises, Beijing has established a collaborative protection mechanism and a procuratorial liaison office, and integrated them into the holistic IP protection system.
In 2022, courts in Beijing will continue to strengthen intellectual property trials and judicial crackdowns on monopoly practices and unfair competition, providing better judicial services for the high-quality development of the capital. Procuratorates in Beijing will continue to deepen the supply-side structural reform so that the procuratorial system can better suit the needs of Beijing in its high-quality development. The pursuit of comprehensive and coordinated development of the four major fronts of procuratorial work, encompassing civil, criminal, administrative and public interest litigation dimensions, will promote the systematic reshaping of the procuratorial forces.
(Reporters: Du Yan, Xu Jing)
