Interpretation on Several Issues Concerning Application of Law in Handling Criminal Cases of IP Infringement Jointly Published by SPC & SPP

On 24 April 2025 China's Supreme People's Court (SPC) and Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) jointly released the Interpretation on Several Issues Concerning the Application of Law in Handling Criminal Cases of Intellectual Property Infringement, which will come into effect on 26 April 2025.

The Interpretation, consisting of 31 articles, focuses on five aspects, namely, trademark offences (Articles 1-8), patent counterfeiting (Articles 9-10), copyright offences (Articles 11-15), trade secret offences (Articles 16-21), and issues applicable to IP crimes in general (Articles 22-30).

The Interpretation, among others, clarifies the standards for establishing "the same kind of goods or services", "identical trademarks", and "representations of registered trademark" and adds the conviction thresholds for counterfeiting registered trademarks for services; states the specific scenarios that constitute "counterfeiting a patent of another person" and provides for the conviction thresholds for patent counterfeiting; clarifies the standards for establishing "without permission" and "reproducing, distributing" in copyright infringement and states the conviction thresholds for copyright crimes; provides for the standards for establishing "electronic intrusion" and "serious circumstances" in trade secret crimes; and stipulates the standards for establishing "joint crimes" and defines the terms of "amount of illegal business operations", "value of goods", "sales revenue", and "illegal gains" in IP infringement.

Notably, the Interpretation has lowered the conviction thresholds including those concerning trademark representations, patent counterfeiting, and selling of infringing copies; expanded the scope of crime of selling infringing copies with the incorporation of "sales amount", "value of goods", "number of reproduced copies sold" into the conviction criteria; and raised the upper limit of fines calculated on the basis of illegal gains in IP crimes.

Upon the entry into force of the Interpretation, the previous three judicial interpretations jointly issued by the Supreme People's Court and Supreme People's Procuratorate on the same subject in years 2004, 2007 and 2020 respectively as well as the Reply on Issues Concerning Audio-Visual Products in Handling Criminal Cases of Copyright Infringement (2005) will be repealed.