Procuratorial Office of Intellectual Property of the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) recently designated 80 contact points for intellectual property (IP) prosecution and case handling in order to adapt to the new situations and tasks in the field.
They include the Procuratorial Office of Intellectual Property of the Fourth Branch of Beijing Municipal People's Procuratorate, the Zhangjiang Division of the Shanghai Pudong People's Procuratorate, the Procuratorial Office of Intellectual Property of Suzhou Municipal People's Procuratorate in East China's Jiangsu province, and the Procuratorial Office of Intellectual Property of Siming District People's Procuratorate of Xiamen in East China's Fujian province.
This move aims to implement the requirements of the Party Leadership Group of the SPP to "handle each case with high quality and efficiency," and to focus on strengthening the training of talents in the field of IP.
In March 2022, the SPP's Procuratorial Office of Intellectual Property identified the intellectual property prosecution departments of 34 procuratorates at the city and county level in 20 provinces, which had already comprehensively performed intellectual property prosecution, as the first batch of contact points for handling cases, and formulated management guidelines.
Currently, all procuratorates at the provincial level nationwide have established intellectual procuratorial office of Intellectual Property, and some city-level procuratorates and grassroots procuratorates with a large number of IP cases have also formed IP offices or a special task force. As a result, the number of IP prosecution cases nationwide has significantly increased, and the structure of cases has been noticeably optimized.
Identifying contact points for IP prosecution and case handling has made it possible for the SPP to grasp the related work situations in various regions in a timely manner, comprehensively fulfill its responsibilities, enhance its professional level, and implement high-quality and efficient case handling, according to an official from the SPP's Procuratorial Office of Intellectual Property.
In addition, each contact point also plays a leading and exemplary role in fostering typical cases, summarizing experiences and good practices, doing pioneering research about prominent issues, and driving the development of local IP prosecution work, the official said.
The following factors were taken into account when these contact points were identified: Relevant units have handled a significant caseload to actively carry out the comprehensive responsibilities for IP prosecution; aligning with the efforts to build national IP protection demonstration zones, local procuratorates were designated as contact points; the provinces that have handled more cases were prioritized to fit in with the distribution of IP prosecution cases; and considering the national situation, full coverage across all the provincial-level regions has been achieved.
In the next step, the SPP's Procuratorial Office of Intellectual Property will continue to strengthen communication and coordination, and give guidance to procuratorates at lower levels to fully leverage the important roles of the contact points as bases for improving the quality and efficiency of case handling, frontiers of information, and bases for fostering typical cases, thereby leading and promoting the innovative development of IP prosecution work nationwide.
