Newly Released Judicial Interpretation by the Supreme People’s Court and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate: 500 pirated copies cost 3 years in jail

May 8, 2007

The new judicial interpretation on handling the IP infringement cases was released on April 5, 2007 jointly by The Supreme People’s Court and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, aiming at enhancing the protection of Intellectual Property Rights by criminal and judicial means, which came into force as of the immediate date. In accordance with the new judicial interpretation, the standard of number of copies of counterfeit goods for determining the criminal guilty for the copyright infringement is lowered.

The new judicial interpretation provides that for the purpose of making a profit, where there are totally more than 500 counterfeit copies (discs) of writing works, music, movies, TV series, audio-video products, computer software or other works without license of the copyright owner are manufactured and released, it shall satisfy the description of the article 217 of the criminal law “there are other serious situations”. Where there are more than 2,500 counterfeit copies, it shall satisfy the description of the article 217 of the criminal law “there are particularly serious situation”. The number of copies of counterfeit goods is cut half off against 2004.

In accordance with the Article 217 of the Criminal Law, where there is any infringer who will belong to “there are other serious situations”, he or she shall be sentenced for imprisonment up to 3 years or /and fine. Where there are any other particularly serious situation, any infringer shall be sentenced for imprisonment for 3 years up to 7 years and fine.

As to the IPR crime, the People’s court will make a ruling of the principle penalty and simultaneously increase the amount of fine according to the new judicial interpretation. The new judicial interpretation further makes clear the applicable standard of amount of fine for IP right crime, which reads, in general, the fine will be determined at a range from one to five times of their illegal income, or between 50% up to100% of illegal sales volume.

By unifying the discretion standard of punishment for collective crime and individual crime against the characteristic of the IPR crime, the new judicial interpretation makes it clear that if the IPR infringement crimes described as in the articles 213 and 219 of the Criminal Law are committed by the collective, the judicial interpretation released in 2004 and the discretion standard for punishment of individual crime stipulated in the newly released judicial interpretation will apply.