At the beginning of 2020, the abrupt outbreak of Covid-19 had a huge impact on the judicial work, then how to guarantee the litigation rights of the parties and do well in all trials based on doing a good job in epidemic prevention and control is a long-term problem that entails to be solved well.          

For the past two years, according to the unified deployment of the Municipal High Court, the Beijing Intellectual Property Court has actively implemented online case filing, and the number of cases filed online by the Beijing Intellectual Property Court has currently reached 33% of all first-instance cases accepted by the Beijing Intellectual Property Court, playing a positive role in protecting and facilitating the party’s right of action. Meanwhile, the Municipal High Court has been promoting the simultaneous generation of electronic files with the case for the past few years. The first-instance appeal cases transferred by the Beijing Intellectual Property Court to the Municipal High Court and the Supreme Court have now all adopted the form of electronic files. Correspondingly, cases on appeal transferred by the Beijing Internet Court and other basic-level courts received by the Beijing Intellectual Property Court are also implemented to electronic file transfer for appeal.

The reform of the online case filing and litigation model conforms to the new judicial concept of "smart court" construction promoted by the national court system under the new situation; second, it enables the lawyer, the patent attorney and the partner operate case handling online without the restriction of office hours of judiciary authorities whenever and wherever possible; third, it is convenient to look up information such as the content of the litigation materials submitted by the parties, the court’s review opinions, the one-time notification time leaving tracks throughout the whole process; fourth, the electronic service can be further promoted, and the informatization construction of the intellectual property trial system can be accelerated.

According to the above mentioned, in combination with the successful experience and positive effects of the promotion of online case filing, as well as the fact that most of the administrative cases of patent and trademark authorization and confirmation are represented by lawyers and patent attorneys, the Beijing Intellectual Property Court proposes:

In order to further propel the online filing of intellectual property cases, all administrative cases of patent and trademark authorization and confirmation that are represented by lawyers or patent agents shall be filed online, lawyers, patent agents and parties please give support and cooperation for this.

In the process of the promoting the online filing of administrative cases of patent and trademark authorization and confirmation, the Beijing Intellectual Property Court will continue to summarize experience, revise and improve the mechanism in time, and continuously improve the operations in the rear-end trial work to adapt to the filing process, for the purpose of facilitating the litigation of the parties and improving the quality and efficiency of the trial. In the meantime, it is hoped that lawyers, patent attorneys and parties provide precious opinions and advice for the work of the Beijing Intellectual Property Court combining with judicial practice.

                                            From Beijing Intellectual Property Court

February 14th, 2022