By Meng Yu &  Guodong Du  Chinese courts are studying how to protect the parties’ trade secrets from disclosure during litigation. Research by the courts of Jiangsu Province shows that there are still some loopholes in the trade secrets protection by courts under the current Chinese civil procedure.  In order to know whether trade secrets will be disclosed in the lawsuit, Jiangsu High People’s Court has set up a working group to carry out…

Chenyang Zhang The majority of case titles in mainland China consist of two parts, namely the types of disputes and the information of the parties concerned, the former one of which is referred to as the cause of action (“案由” in Chinese). For example, in the case of infringement upon computer software copyright, Microsoft Corporation v. Shenzhen Lanfei Technology Co., Ltd. (Case No. (2016) Yue 0304 Min Chu No. 4777), and the “infringement upon computer…

By Meng Yu &  Guodong Du  In June 2019, the Institute of Private International Law at China University of Political Science and Law held a seminar, in which the staff of China’s Ministry of Justice introduced the current situation of China’s judicial assistance and the changes to be made.  1. Number of Judicial Assistance Requests  According to the staff, in the past five years, China’s Ministry of Justice has handled an average of about…

Chenyang Zhang China’s hierarchical trial system for civil cases can be summarized as “2+1+1”, namely: 2: Generally, cases shall be closed after the second instance. 1: Under special circumstances, the parties may also apply to a higher court for retrial of the case after the final adjudication. 1: After the application for retrial is dismissed by the court, the parties may also apply to the procuratorate for review of the case so that the court…

By Meng Yu &  Guodong Du  In China, the vast majority of arbitration institutions were initially established by local governments, which to some extent led to their dependence on local governments. Now China is trying to make arbitration institutions more independent of the government in order to enhance their market competitiveness. 1. The vast majority of arbitration institutions in China rely on the government. According to a survey in 2007, 42.5% of the arbitration…

Chenyang Zhang How does a Chinese court set a Case Number(案号) for each case? I. Basic Format of Case Number The general format of the case number in Chinese courts is as follows: (year of case acceptance) + court code + case type code + serial number. Take “(2017) Jing 04 Min Zhong No. 367” as an example: “(2017)” is the year of case acceptance “Jing 04” is the court code, referring to Beijing Fourth…

By Meng Yu &  Guodong Du  For a long time, Chinese courts have assigned cases to judges by their own dedicated personnel. Now, Chinese courts are trying to replace the traditional practice with a random case assignment mechanism. After accepting the parties’ application for case docket, Chinese courts will assign the case to a judge (case hearing by a sole judge) or several judges (case hearing by a collegial panel). In practice, the court…