The Hangzhou Internet Court is not a new thing that emerged out of nowhere. On the contrary, its birth is also the result of continuous attempts and evolution of judicial reform and Internet legal processes.
In April 2015, the Zhejiang Provincial Higher People's Court decided that three grassroots courts in Hangzhou's Xihu District, Binjiang District, and Yuhang District and the Hangzhou Intermediate People's Court would carry out e-commerce online court pilots. Among them, the Xihu District Court heard Internet cases For financial disputes and electronic supervision cases, the Binjiang District Court hears intellectual property dispute cases, the Yuhang District Court hears online transaction dispute cases, and the Hangzhou Intermediate People's Court hears appeal cases of the aforementioned disputes.
As of April this year, e-commerce online courts have handled nearly 20,000 disputes involving online shopping and online payments. With the continuous accumulation of experience, 15 courts across Zhejiang Province have joined the online court platform. The e-commerce online court has realized the entire process of litigation such as prosecution, mediation, case filing (jurisdictional objection), evidence production, cross-examination, hearing, and judgment, making it possible to resolve online disputes without leaving home.
In addition, the Hangzhou Railway Transport Court, which is the basis for the construction of Hangzhou Internet Court, has also been constantly transforming itself in recent years. The transformation of railway courts based on physical links and displacement has also played a prelude to the opening of Internet courts based on data links and information. This laid the foundation for the establishment of an Internet Court in Hangzhou. It can be described as the past life of Hangzhou Internet Court.
In April this year, the Supreme Court approved the Hangzhou Railway Transport Court to have centralized jurisdiction over five types of Internet-related cases in Hangzhou. From May 1 to June 20 this year, the court received 1,896 applications for Internet-related cases and officially filed 1,446 cases.
Currently, the Hangzhou Railway Transport Court’s online litigation platform already has columns for online courts, case inquiries, mediation services, lawyer services, smart trials, similar cases, etc., and briefly introduces business processes and other information. Information on its website shows that the main cases currently accepted by the platform include: e-commerce transaction disputes, e-commerce copyright infringement litigation, e-commerce small loan litigation, contract disputes, trademark infringement disputes, and traffic liability disputes.
A lawyer from a Beijing law firm has been dealing with Hangzhou’s court system for a long time. According to him, transforming the railway courts into cross-administrative division courts to hear special types of cases is a stated goal of the central judicial reform. In recent years, the Hangzhou Railway Court has also made active transformation attempts in this regard. Since 2016, it has carried out transformation pilots involving cross-regional jurisdiction and trials involving intellectual property, Internet cases and some administrative cases.
About the first half of last year, the Hangzhou Railway Court has begun to undertake cross-district intellectual property cases within Hangzhou city, such as undertaking some intellectual property rights in suburban counties of Hangzhou that were originally handled by the Hangzhou Intermediate People’s Court. case. "Hangzhou Railway Court currently has a group of judges with outstanding ability to adjudicate intellectual property cases."
The deputy director of the Communication Law Research Center of China University of Political Science and Law said that the newly established Hangzhou Internet Court is different from the previous e-commerce court. The courts are essentially different: in addition to e-commerce disputes, Internet courts also accept Internet infringement, Internet trademarks, Internet unfair competition, Internet content dissemination, and even criminal cases, etc., with a wider scope. Moreover, the Internet Court model can also be promoted and is likely to be replicated in courts in other cities.