Highlights from the SPC's 2018 Annual Report on Intellectual Property Cases

The 2018 version of the Supreme People's Court, Annual Report on Intellectual Property Cases (2018) (Abstract) (2018 Annual Report) (最高人民法院知识产权案件年度报告 (2018) 摘要) was released in April 2019. Since its debut 11 years ago, these annual reports have become an important event for practitioners, observers and litigants to seek insight and guidance from the Supreme People's Court (SPC) for various important intellectual property legal issues. While China is a civil law country, the judiciary, led by the SPC, has been making a consistent effort to attach greater significance to judicial decisions, as shown by the compilation of representative cases, as well as associated commentaries provided by the SPC and some influential provincial high courts each year.