An advanced studies seminar on judicial approaches to intellectual property rights (IPRs), jointly organized by the Supreme People's Court of China (SPC) and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), opened in Beijing on August 21.

Tao Kaiyuan, vice-president of the SPC, addressed the opening ceremony of the study session, which was also attended by WIPO Deputy Director-General Wang Binying and Legal Counsel Frits Bontekoe.

Tao said that in recent years, the SPC has been carrying out significant pragmatic cooperation with WIPO, bearing fruits in areas such as judicial protection of IPRs, case sharing, and academic research.

She noted that Zhou Qiang, president of the SPC, and Francis Gurry, director-general of WIPO, signed a memorandum of understanding on judicial exchanges and cooperation in 2017, laying a solid foundation for deepening practical cooperation.

The seminar on legal attention to IPRs is the most important and the highest-profile judicial training activity organized by WIPO for the past few years, and marks a new stage of cooperation between the two sides, Tao added.

Tao stressed that thanks to over 30 years’ endeavor, judicial protection of IPRs in China has scored great achievements that have been recognized worldwide.

Always maintaining an open mind and world view, the courts in China have constantly enhanced exchanges and cooperation with world organizations like WIPO and other countries, and taken an active part in international intellectual property management, contributing China’s experience and wisdom to the development of world intellectual property affairs, she said.

More than 40 judges from China and 14 other countries including the United States, Germany, Australia, Belgium, and South Korea attended the three-day training.