The Supreme People's Court ("SPC") has recently issued the Provisions on Several Issues Concerning the Application of Law in Examining Cases Involving Act Preservation in Intellectual Property Disputes (the "Provisions"), with effect from January 1, 2019.
Encompassing 21 articles in total, the Provisions mainly discuss matters in four aspects. The first is procedural rules, covering application subjects, courts with jurisdiction, applications and issues specified therein, examination procedures, reviews, etc. The second is substantial rules, covering considerations to be taken into account in determining the necessity of act preservation, the duration of act perseveration measures. The third is about the identification of wrong applications for act preservation, the jurisdiction of compensation lawsuits attributed to wrong applications, the lifting of act preservation measures, etc. The fourth is about how to handle applications concurrently filed for preservation in different forms, application fees, among other issues. The Provisions expressly state that, if failure to take immediate act preservation measures is serious enough to harm the applicant's interests, under any of six circumstances, including "where trade secrets of the applicant are to be illegally disclosed", this situation shall be considered to be the "urgent situation" as mentioned in Article 100 and Article 101 of the Civil Procedure Law.