The Supreme People's Court ("SPC") has recently distributed the Circular on Issuing the 17th Batch of Guiding Cases (the "Circular").
The Circular publishes four administrative cases and one case involving intellectual property rights (Guiding Case No.88 – No.92) for the reference of people's courts at all levels in trying similar cases. In particular, the Guiding Case No. 88, "Zhang Daowen, Tao Ren et al. vs People's Government of Jianyang City of Sichuan Province over the Infringement upon the Management Right in Pedicabs for Passenger Transport Purpose", aims to specify that the administrative licensing has a legal term, and the administrative counterpart' claim that the administrative licensing is not limited in respect of its term on the ground that the administrative organ has not informed it of the legal term, shall not be held by the people's court. Also, it is made clear that where the administrative organ fails to inform the administrative counterpart of the term of the administrative licensing when it approves the administrative licensing, but terminates the counterpart's administrative licensing rights and interests in the future on the excuse that the licensed term has expired, the circumstance amounts to a violation of administrative procedures; if the people's court makes a ruling to withdraw the administrative act, clearly negative impacts will be caused on the public interest and the order of public administration, and therefore, the people's court is advised to rule that the administrative act is illegal.