On April 21, 2025, China’s Supreme People’s Court released the “Status of Judicial Protection of Intellectual Property Rights in Chinese Courts (2024)” (中国法院知识产权司法保护状况(2024年)) providing a wealth of data regarding Chinese IP litigation in 2024. Criminal IP enforcement continues to grow in China with Chinese courts receiving 9,120 first-instance criminal cases involving infringement on IP and concluding 9,003 such cases, marking increases of 24.34% and 29.22% compared to 2023, respectively. Overall, Chinese courts received 529,370 IP cases and concluded 543,911 cases, representing a decrease of 2.67% and an increase of 0.001% respectively over 2023.
Other statistics released include:
- Punitive damages were applied in 460 cases involving seriously malicious infringement, marking a year-on-year(YoY) increase of 44.2%.
- Newly received patent cases totaled 44,255, down 1.02% compared to the previous year;
- trademark cases numbered 124,918, down 4.95% from the previous year;
- copyright cases amounted to 247,149, down 1.8% compared to 2023;
- technology contract cases reached 8,320, up 28.16% YoY;
- competition-related cases totaled 10,567, up 3.29% YoY; and
- other types of civil IP disputes amounted to 14,714, down 16.53% YoY.
- Chinese courts accepted 20,849 administrative IP cases of the first instance and 27,745 were concluded, showing increases of 1.29% and 24.19% from 2023, respectively.
- newly received patent cases totaled 1,679, down 15.63% YoY;
- trademark cases numbered 19,130, up 3.08% YoY;
- copyright cases stood at 9, decreasing by 2 cases compared to 2023; and
- other types of cases totaled 31, up 29.17% YoY.
- Chinese courts received 9,120 first-instance criminal cases involving infringement on IP and concluded 9,003 such cases, marking increases of 24.34% and 29.22% compared to 2023, respectively.
- 1 criminal case related to patent counterfeiting was newly received, and 2 such cases were concluded;
- 8,079 were criminal cases involving registered trademark infringement, and 8,017 such cases were concluded, representing YoY increases of 21.78% and 26.11%;
- 938 were criminal cases involving copyright infringement, with 913 such cases concluded, reflecting YoY increases of 49.6% and 68.14% respectively;
- 102 other criminal cases were newly filed, while 77 such cases were concluded in the same year, up 39.73% and 7.58% YoY, respectively.
The full text in Chinese and English is available here: 中国法院知识产权司法保护状况（2024).