Capital's IP court boosts quality of hearings

Beijing Intellectual Property Court said on Wednesday that it has increased efforts to deal with patent disputes and improve the quality of its case hearings.

Since being established in November 2014, 3,693 patent disputes have been filed with the court, 1,760 of which have been concluded.

Patent cases made up almost 17 percent of the total IP disputes the court handled over the past two years, with 20 percent of these emanating from overseas.

"Although hearing patent disputes takes up a lot of time and energy, we always pay great attention to them because the quality of patents indicates our country's pace of innovation," said Chen Jinchuan, vice president of the court.

An increasing number of disputes relate to core technology and foreign enterprises, which Chen said shows China has become a major market for IP that is gaining in trust among foreigners.

The court has handled patent cases involving Apple Inc, the technology giant from the United States, as well as Chinese internet major Baidu.

So far, the court has set up 12 teams specializing in hearing patent disputes and appointed 39 technical investigators.

"The investigators have a technical background, coming mainly from academic institutes and the nation's patent administrations and colleges," Chen said. "These talented people make a big contribution to improving our efficiency and accuracy in case hearings."