Litigation & Dispute Resolution

Working the System

Over the last several years, Chinese courts have generally increased the amount of compensation awarded to IP owners in civil actions, while payment of civil damages is now easier due to the introduction of “social credit” penalties against defendants that fail to pay compensation awards. As a result, civil litigation has become an attractive and practical means of protecting IP rights and creating deterrence against future infringements.

The litigation team from the Beijing and Shanghai offices of East IP Law Firm – supported by our investigation specialists – has vast experience in handling the full range of disputes in China, including those involving:

  • Counterfeiting
  • Trademark infringement
  • Unfair competition
  • Patent infringement
  • Copyright infringement
  • Trade secret violations
  • Antitrust litigation
  • IP contract litigation
  • Arbitration of IP disputes
  • Other civil and commercial litigation and arbitration

Our assistance in unfair competition cases covers a wide range of subject disputes, including most typically those involving platform liability, bad faith trademark registration, trade dress, trade names, and unregistered trademarks.

Making Law

Our team also seeks to assist clients in achieving breakthroughs by testing the boundaries of Chinese law, and thereby helping clients address long-standing infringement issues. Examples include several cases our team members have brought over the last few years against bad faith trademark pirates based on China’s Anti-Unfair Competition Law. In these cases, we have been able to secure significant compensation awards that include not only damages based on the defendant’s sales of counterfeit or infringing goods, but also compensation for the legal and investigation costs incurred by the client in pursuing registry disputes – including oppositions, invalidation actions and related appeals. 

Support for Criminal IP Cases

Experience

Unfair Competition

Assisting clients in pursuing novel enforcement of IP rights through unfair competition proceedings, such as recent case for online platform in which Chinese court gave protection to sports statistics and other news against competitor that had been scraping its site and redistributing the data on its own competing service.

Anti-Counterfeiting

Assisting victim brand owners in managing criminal and civil enforcement campaigns against counterfeiters. 

AI – Copyright

Assisting client in protecting videos copied and stored by competitor for use in user-created works generated with the assistance of AI tools.

Key Contacts

Partner
Litigation & Dispute Resolution
Partner
Litigation & Dispute Resolution

Recent Developments

The Changsha Intermediate People’s Court has issued a final judgment in a groundbreaking copyright infringement and unfair competition case involving AI-generated “Text-to-Video” technology....
This East IP report offers a brief survey of reported civil decisions since 2018 against registry pirates, particularly those that have used the victim’s...
Intellectual property enforcement is viewed by most brand owners as strictly a cost centre – an unavoidable expense for a grudging responsibility. In some...