It is said that it is very rarely in Chinese IP judicial trial history that a Vice President of the Supreme People’s Court himself acts as the presiding judge. The full-fledged panel of trial judges also showed that the Supreme People’s Court attached great importance to the case.

Background information indicates that Justice Xi Xiaoming is the Member of the Party Leadership Group and Vice President of the Supreme People’s Court of PRC, Commissioner of the Judiciary Committee, and Grand Justice of the second rank. He has rich practical experience in civil and commercial trials, and had participated in the draft work of the Contract Law, the Securities Law, Bankruptcy Law, Corporation Law and other important laws and judicial interpretations in China. Moreover he has an indepth study on the theoretical and practical issues in the field of civil and commercial law and economic law.

As the Vice President of the Supreme People’s Court in charge of IP jurisprudence and IP jurist of the highest rank, Justice Xi’s speeches in various formal occasions have often been considered as the “wind vane” of exploring China IP’s policy tendency.

In the seminar on further strengthening the IP judicial protection held by the Supreme People’s Court in November 2012, Justice Xi put forward three issues by combining the judicial practices with the current theoretical study of IP judicial protection: firstly, continued focus on IP enforcement by the people’s court; secondly, the new requirements for further enhancing IP protection posed by the current situations and tasks; and thirdly, actively seeking measures of intensifying protection and performing the guidance roles.

Justice Xi stressed that strengthening the protection is the basic orientation and policy direction of IP judicial protection. The Court has always attached great importance to IP protection and intensified IP judicial protection by means of case analysis, perfecting and unifying law applicable standards, continuously defining and improving rules of evidence, improving the compensation amount and etc.

According to Justice Xi, the seminar focused on analyzing the constraints of intensifying protection and its resolution. It is also necessary to study and well control the “degree” of IP judicial protection and make good use of the relevant law system to further play the function and efficiency of the existing judicial mechanism.
His speech has attracted wide attention of media all over the world, and has been generally considered as a strong signal of China’s foreign policy to further intensify IP judicial protection.

Last November, Justice Xi attended The First Asia-Pacific Intellectual Property Forum in Su Zhou and delivered a speech under the theme of “Judicial IP Philosophy and Policy of Chinese Courts.” He stated that judicial policy is the extraction and summarization of spirit of law, and the product of the interaction of politics and law. It is the character of law’s principle and IP’s public policy as well as the responsibility of judicial activities to realize the intended target of legislation to determine the necessity and importance of IP judicial philosophy and policy. In judicial practices, it is also significant for IP judicial policy to play the role of guidance, balance and exploration, direct the correct implementation of the legal rules and ensure the right direction of law application.

Justice Xi pointed out that the fundamental policy for IP judicial protection of Chinese courts currently is to strengthen protection, conduct categorization and punish appropriately. Chinese courts increasingly intensify IP protection by ways of increasing the damage compensation, reducing obligee’s burden of proof and using reasonably the temporary injunction system. Because of the richness of content, variety of species and diversity of characters of IPR, it is required to determine differently the corresponding policy, standard and ideas of protection. Moreover, to intensify protection doesn’t mean to improve the protection level blindly, but to adapt to the objective demands of economic and social development and to ascertain the corresponding protection scale and boundary.

Justice Xi emphasized that the relationship between judicial policy and law should be dealt with property. Only through legal standards can judicial policy be concrete and be implemented effectively. In specific cases, through both using the applicable policy to provide guidance for law application and insisting on the specific legal standard and thorough analogy of law, the arbitrariness of applicable policy can be prevented. When interpreting the laws, using discretionary doctrine and solving the interest conflicts, judicial policy should be especially oriented to make sure the harmoniousness between legal effect and social effect.