(IPHouse data on foreign-related IP cases at the Beijing IP court)

A Chinese judge recently told me that amongst the most important developments in the Chinese judiciary in recent years has been the increasing transparency of the courts.  I agree.  The increased transparency of the courts has also been noted by Susan Finder in her excellent blog.

One of the significant developments this year has been in the availability of value-added database services that utilize the underlying case data. IPHouse is a new database, set up this year, which provides comprehensive search capabilities for over 200,000 IP-related cases in China to date. It is operated under the guidance of former SIPO Commissioner Gao Lulin, a partner at the Beijing East IP  law firm.

IPHouse has prepared a 110 page English language statistical analysis of the work of the Beijing IP Court in 2015, available here.   IPHouse has told me that the report is prepared at the request of the Beijing IP court as part of its statistical review of the court’s activities.  It includes extensive data on types of cases, practices of individual judges and foreign-related activities, and summaries of cases.

As another sample of their work, regarding the important role of the Beijing IP Court in reviewing Chinese Trademark administrative decisions, IPHouse also prepared a brief report that shows from 2011 – 2015, there are 5,121 cases involved plaintiffs from foreign countries and Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan regions, where 1,010 administrative decision were reversed by the courts, accounts for 44.81% of all reversed cases. The rate of reversing cases involving foreign and Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan region plaintiffs is 19.72%. This is 1.89% higher than the average reversal rate.  IPHouse’s snapshot data of overall foreign IP cases shows a foreign plaintiff success rate in the courts of 70%.    Together these data suggest that foreigners have are faring well in the courts in China.  Finally, IPHouse has also prepared a short statistical summary of patent and trademark administrative decisions adjudicated at the IP Court, available here.

For US and Chinese counsel seeking to more accurately assess litigation risks and opportunities, IPNow builds on the existing IPHouse database. It provides search results in five different categories – courts, judges, agencies, attorneys, and parties. The search results are presented in various graphical charts depending on the search criteria, as follows:

1. Courts – Collects judgments from over 800 courts across the country

–          Provides historical cases, length of trial, support rate of claimed damages, etc.

2. Judges – Collects over 9,000 judges’ opinions

–          Provides the number of cases tried, case decisions, rate of support of claimed damages, etc.

3. Agencies – Collects from over 29,000 intellectual property agencies

–          Provides winning rate from historical data.

–          Each agent can be compared with other agencies in more than 20 different selections.

4. Attorneys – Collects from over 100,000 attorneys’ information

–          Provides winning rate from historical data, result of cases represented, and adversary party’s statistics.

5. Parties – Collects over 148,000 parties

–          Provides party who filed the cases, the agency and agents hired, winning rate, and support from the court for the claimed damages.

Please contact IPHouse directly for further information.