Thursday, April 29, 2021
In follow up to China’s Ministry of Public Security’s press conference on April 23, 2021 regarding criminal Intellectual Property (IP) law investigations, China’s Supreme People’s Procuratorate (SPP) on April 25, 2021 released criminal IP law prosecution data and a list of typical cases. In 2020, the SPP prosecuted 12,163 people in 5,847 cases, a year-on-year increase of 7.6% and 10.4% respectively. Criminal trademark infringement cases accounted for 94.2% of the total, copyright infringement cases accounted for 5.3% of the total, and trade secret infringement cases accounted for 0.5% of the total.
An approximate translation of the 12 typical cases follow (edited for length and clarity). The full original text of the cases is available here (Chinese only) and in case of discrepancy the Chinese version should be relied on.