On October 14, 2019, China Supreme Court announced the Decision to Amend the Certain Provisions on Evidence in Civil Proceedings (“New Evidence Rules”), which will soon become effective on May 1, 2020.  This is the first amendment to the Evidence Rules since its enactment on April 1, 2002.

The amendment proposes, among others, changes to the formality requirements of “extraterritorial evidence” (Article 16), which will largely impact foreign IP rights holders. Foreign IP right holders have long been frustrated by China’s rigid evidentiary formality requirement that all extraterritorial evidence, in order to be admissible in court, needs to be notarized and legalized. The revised Article 16 relaxes the legalization requirement (after the notarization) for the documentary evidence formed outside of China, and provides that only the identity related evidence obtained aboard is subject to notarization and legalization. 

This new requirement will somehow alleviate the evidentiary burden on the extraterritorial evidence for foreign IP rights holders.

As of May 1, 2020, the New Evidence Rules will be applicable to all cases occur after April 1, 2002.  In the event of any discrepancy, this new requirement shall be applied as that the New Evidence Rules promulgated by the SPC is a retroactive legislation.

Contributed by: Cindy Zhen