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A judge hears a case on infringement of information-dissemination rights at the Hangzhou Court of the Internet on Friday.[Photo/ China Daily] |
China has set up its first court specializing in handling of internet-related disputes in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, where many technology enterprises are located, amid rapid growth of online purchases and financial activities in the country.
The Hangzhou Court of the Internet is responsible for hearing six types of civil and administrative internet-related cases in the city, such as those involving online intellectual property rights and e-commerce disputes. It will also handle other web-related cases designated by higher courts, according to the top court.
“The establishment of the court is to meet the growing legal demand from litigants. It will also help the public to solve online disputes more effectively,” Zhou Qiang, president of the Supreme People’s Court, said after visiting the court on Friday.
He said the new court will play an important role in maintaining a safe internet and must provide good legal service to litigants.
A key feature of the court is that it allows litigants to handle a lawsuit entirely online. From case filing to the court hearing, litigants do not have to go to the court in person, according to Zhu Shenyuan, vice-president of the Zhejiang Provincial High People’s Court.
“Our aim is to make court hearings keep pace with the fast development of cyberspace and to explore new ways of hearing lawsuits so that it can be expanded across the country,” Zhu said.
People can register at the court’s website－netcourt.gov.cn, which includes an English-language version－and then provide evidence and materials. Defendants will be notified via text messages if the court files the case.
Judges will inform both parties of the trial time, and then those involved can log in to the website’s trial page, which uses a remote video system, according to Zhu.
The new internet court is a district-level court, and if litigants disagree with the verdict, they can appeal to the city’s intermediate people’s court, he said.
Cheng Jianle, deputy director of the provincial high court’s research office, said the court’s location was carefully chosen.
Hangzhou is home to such technology enterprises as Alibaba, the company behind the Alipay mobile payment system, and the Taobao online marketplace. Because of this, the city has witnessed a soaring number of online disputes in recent years, he said.
According to the provincial high court, Hangzhou courts handled about 10,000 cases related to e-commerce last year, up from about 600 in 2013.
A trial operation of the internet court, guided by the top court, began in May. On June 26, the establishment of the court was formally approved at a meeting of the Leading Group for Overall Reform presided over by President Xi Jinping.
As of Tuesday, it had accepted 2,605 cases since May, of which 1,444 have been concluded. In the court’s litigation service center, a digital screen showed that more than 1,200 of the accepted cases were related to defective online products, followed by conflicts caused by online piracy and e-commerce contracts.
The average time of hearings conducted online was 25 minutes, according to the internet court.
“The online hearings make our work more transparent and facilitate litigants,” said Du Qian, president of the internet court, adding that the court will enhance technology support to prevent network failures.
Zhou Hanhua, a law professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the court represents progress, since it’s the first to put all legal proceedings online. “But the court still faces challenges, such as how to facilitate those litigants who are not familiar with the internet.”
Yang Ming, deputy director of the internet law center at Peking University, said that authenticating evidence provided online needs further study.
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Combo photo shows the working process in a court room of the Internet court in Hangzhou, capital of east China’s Zhejiang Province, Aug. 18, 2017. The court, first of its kind in China, specializing in handling Internet-related cases, opened Friday to cater to the increasing number of online trade disputes and copyright lawsuits. The cases handled by the court will be tried online. [Photo/Xinhua] |
China’s first court specializing in handling Internet-related cases opened Friday in the e-commerce hub of Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang Province, to cater to the increasing number of online disputes.
The Hangzhou Internet Court heard its first case regarding a copyright infringement between an online writer and internet giant Netease on its opening day.
Sitting in front of their computers in Hangzhou and Beijing, the agents representing the plaintiff and the defendant communicated with the judge online. The trial lasted about 20 minutes.
“The Internet court breaks geographic boundaries and greatly saves time in traditional hearings,” said Wang Jiangqiao, vice president of the court.
The court mainly handles civil cases such as contract disputes involving online shopping, service and small loans, copyright and infringement lawsuits, domain name dispute, Internet defaming and some administrative lawsuits.
It will also handle certain cases assigned by superior courts.
By registering on court’s website, plaintiffs can file lawsuits and pay legal costs. The cases handled by the court will be tried online. The process is quicker, and plaintiffs and defendants can have their disputes handled while at home and at much lower cost.
“The hearing of an Internet-related case often lasts at least two days and each side has to spend thousands of yuan to travel to the court,” said Zhang Sijia, a lawyer.
“We are involved in cases all over the country and the costs are too high to attend every lawsuit. Sometimes even if we win the case, we lose a huge amount of money in the process. It will significantly lower our costs if we can have them done online,” said Yang Wei, vice president of Netease.
The opening of the court is along with the fast growing internet users and the consequent online disputes in China.
According to the latest report from the China Internet Network Information Center, China had about 751 million Internet users and 724 million mobile Internet users as of the end of June.
As China pushes its Internet Plus and innovation strategies, the Internet is playing an increasingly important role in the country’s economic transformation. China is home to a number of Internet giants such as Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent.
The income of China’s top 100 Internet companies rose 46.8 percent year-on-year to 1.1 trillion yuan (about 164 billion U.S. dollars) in 2016, latest official data showed.
It was the first time the total has surpassed one trillion yuan, according to calculations by Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Internet Society of China.
But the country is also seeing a surge in cyber disputes as more people go online to shop, publish their works and manage finance.
In 2015, the Zhejiang provincial higher people’s court initiated a pilot online court program at three district courts in Hangzhou to handle online trade, copyright and financial services disputes.
So far, a total of 15 courts in Zhejiang have joined the program and dealt with nearly 23,000 cases.
“With more cases accepted, we found it hard to judge a case according to traditional lawsuit regulations,” said Li Shaoping, deputy head of Supreme People’s Court.
The Internet court was therefore outlined at the 36th meeting of the Central Leading Group for Deepening Overall Reform in June as the latest effort to deepen judical reform through lifting the efficiency of justice, improving the hearing procedures of Internet-related cases and promoting the sound development of the Internet industry.
The new court allows both sides to submit evidence in real time and is connected with big data to help judges make decisions.
“For example, the system can present the judge with similar cases as references in the course of the proceeding,” said Wang. “The judge can also check the transaction history at any time when dealing with cases involving online transaction disputes.”
“By setting up the Internet court, we hope to establish a professional platform to deal with Internet-related cases with new concepts and specially-designed regulations,” Li said.
Zhou Hanhua, law researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the Internet court involved the use of information technology in judicial procedures and process transformation.
The reform should try to let everyone feel justice in each case, he added.
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