According to a press release dated August 4, 2023 from the China’s Supreme People’s Procuratorate (SPP) 11,675 people were prosecuted for IP Crimes in the first half 2023, up 36.1% year-on-year. Criminal trademark infringement made up the majority of IP crimes with 10,384 people prosecuted accounting for 88.9% of the total. Copyright was second with 1,122 persons prosecuted. Trade secret misappropriation was third with 167 people prosecuted, up 89.8% year-on-year.
Category: Trademarks
15 Rolex Counterfeiters Sentenced to up to 6.5 Years Prison in 300 Million RMB Counterfeit Case
On July 22, 2023, the Zhenjiang Economic Development Zone People’s Court announced the sentencing of 15 defendants to prison sentences ranging from suspended sentences to six years six months plus fines for the crime of counterfeiting registered trademarks belong to Rolex. The amount involved in the counterfeit case that ran from July 2015 to April 2021 was over 300 million RMB.
Chinese Trademark Registrations Down 45% in First Half of 2023 Year-on-Year
In recently released data from the Chinese National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA), the number of Chinese trademark authorizations dropped just over 45% in the first half of 2023 versus the first half of 2022. Specifically, there were 2,018,119 trademarks granted in 2023 H1 versus 3,673,925 in 2022 H1. The number of foreign-originated trademark grants also dropped from 98,650 to 60,776 in 2023 H1 (down about 38%) although as a percentage foreign-originated trademark grants increased from 2.7% to 3% of total …
2022 Annual Report of the China National Intellectual Property Administration: 955,000 Patent Applications Were ‘Abnormal’
On June 5, 2023, China’s National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) released the 2022 Annual Report of the China National Intellectual Property Administration (国家知识产权局2022年度报告) including statistical data on 2022 patent application filings. In 2022 CNIPA identified 955,000 abnormal patent applications (up 17% on 2021) and 372,100 malicious trademark registrations (down slightly from 2021). As there was a total of 5,365,000 patent applications (invention, utility model and design) filed in 2022, then almost 18% of patent applications in 2022 were abnormal (assuming …