Recently, the State Council Press Office held a press conference on the status of China's intellectual property development in 2017.

As reported, China continued the journey of finetuning the laws and regulations for intellectual property protection in 2017, with the revised "Anti-Unfair Competition Law" passed, and substantial progresses made in the revision and formulation of “Patent Law”, “Patent Agency Regulations” and "Regulations concerning the Administration of Human Genetic Resources". In addition, the revisions of "Copyright Law", "Regulations concerning the Protection of Olympic Symbols", "National Defense Patent Regulations", "Regulations Concerning the Protection of New Plant Varieties", and "Regulations Concerning the Management of Access to and Benefit-sharing of Genetic Resources" are being actively pursued. Moving forward, anti-monopoly guidance in the field of intellectual property will soon be issued, and further studies will be conducted on protecting IP achievements in new areas and new industries.

In 2017, there were 67,000 patent administrative enforcement cases, up 36.3%; and 30,100 trademark administrative enforcement cases involving a total of 333 million yuan; copyright enforcement units investigated and handled more than 3,100 infringement and piracy cases and captured 6.05 million pirated products; customs seized 19,200 batches of imports and exports involving 40.95 million infringing goods and the value totaled at 182 million yuan. Courts nationwide received a total of 213,500 IP related civil, administrative, or criminal cases of first instance, and concluded 203,300 cases, an increase of 40.37% and 38.38% respectively over the previous year. Procuratorate organs approved the arrest of 4,272 persons involved in 2,510 IP infringement crimes and prosecuted 3,880 cases involving 7,157 persons. Public security agencies cracked 17,000 cases of IP infringement and sale of counterfeit and shoddy goods, involving 6.46 billion yuan, with 44 major cases listed and supervised.