The Supreme People's Court （SPC） of China makes some changes in trial practice to suit the advancement of the country's opening-up policy. In a recently-released guiding opinion aimed to enhance judicial protection in the policy-related areas and establish a business climate preaching rule of law, up to international standards and facilitation, trial of IPR cases is singled out with added requirements in hardening protection over IPRs of key fields and essential technologies.

According to SPC's vice president Yang Wanming, the Opinion is a response to the challenges posed by the full-scale opening-up to trying cases. Specific requirements are provided for trial of business, maritime, administrative, IPR, cross-border bankruptcy, finance and other foreign-related cases, making the Opinion an important document for trial of foreign-related cases and court capacity building.

The Opinion points out that some actions must be taken to uphold a unified, open, fair and orderly market including reinforcement of IPR judicial protection, concrete execution of punitive damages for IPR infringement, punishment of IPR crimes, heightening of trade secret protection, curtailing of monopolistic and unfair competition acts.

Other measures include fine-tuning foreign-related IPR litigation procedures, studying IPR international parallel litigation to establish litigation venues trusted and selected by parties for international protection of their IPRs; strictly applying the foreign investment laws and relevant administrative rules and trying technology transfer cases involving foreign parties properly to safeguard technological exchanges and cooperation between Chinese and foreign companies under the principles of rule of market and rule of law.