WIPO China: WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Shanghai Service Rendered First Arbitral Award

Recently, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Arbitration and Mediation Shanghai Service rendered its first arbitral award in a foreign-related IP dispute.  

The Claimant was a foreign enterprise, and the Respondents were Chinese enterprises. The Parties, pursuant to their Arbitration Agreement, filed a Request for Arbitration with the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Shanghai Service to resolve the foreign-related IP dispute between the Parties.    

The Tribunal, based on the Parties’ agreement and pursuant to the provisions of Chinese laws and the WIPO Expedited Arbitration Rules, rendered an arbitral award, which has been fully complied with by the Parties.  

About the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Shanghai Service

The WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center offers time- and cost-efficient alternative dispute resolution (ADR) options, such as mediation, arbitration, expedited arbitration and expert determination to enable private parties to settle their domestic or cross-border IP and technology disputes out of the courts.

WIPO Arbitration offers advantages such as international neutrality, expertise, confidentiality, finality of awards and enforceability of awards. WIPO Arbitration is particularly appropriate for disputes involving IP or technology more generally, such as disputes arising from patent, trademark or copyright licenses, research and development agreements, software development contracts, distribution agreements, franchises, and trademark coexistence agreements.

The WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Shanghai Service, registered in the China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone in October 2019, is the first international arbitral institution approved by the Ministry of Justice of China to conduct arbitration and mediation for foreign-related IP disputes within China.

With the support of the Supreme People’s Court of China, the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Shanghai Service has established a cooperation mechanism for court-referred mediation of foreign-related IP disputes with courts in Shanghai, Fujian, Hainan, Guangdong and Chongqing. It has administered over 120 mediation cases referred by courts in China, with a settlement rate of approximately 35%. Disputes covered a wide range of IP areas, with trademarks (62%) and patents (22%) most common, followed by copyright and digital content (10%), ICT (2%) and others (4%). Parties involved in these disputes came from more than countries including France, United Kingdom, United States of America, Japan, Germany etc.