Specifically, Chinese IPR protection introduces judicial blockchain that resolves legal disputes and increase efficiency.

Evidence lies at the heart of many challenges in enforcing intellectual property rights online. When a copyright work is made available online, it is often difficult for right holders to track down pirated copies, due to the sheer scale of unauthorised copies on the Internet. When trademarked goods are sold online, it is often difficult for consumers, right holders and platforms to track down where the goods have come from and to figure out whether the goods are counterfeits or pirated. The anonymity of Bad Actors on the Internet exacerbates the difficulty of tracking down the source of counterfeits or pirated goods.

China is currently at the forefront of realising Blockchain’s potential in intellectual property enforcement, especially in evidence collection. In 2018, the Hangzhou Internet Court accepted Blockchain-authenticated evidence in a copyright infringement case, the first court to do so anywhere in the world.®” In this case, the Blockchain-based evidence preservation service “Baoquan” was used to securely capture and store a snapshot of a website. The snapshot proved that the defendant in the case had unlawfully disseminated the claimant’s copyright material.” The value of the Blockchain tool here was to enable the claimant to prove that the evidence of infringement — the snapshot of the website — was authentic and had not been tampered with. In the instant the snapshot is captured, a copy is digitally signed and “hashed” with a timestamp before being stored on the Factom Blockchain. This copy functions as a secure record that cannot be altered.”" The tool thus allowed the court to compare the evidence presented by the claimant with the secure Blockchain record, establishing that it had not been tampered with and could be relied upon.”” The Hangzhou Internet Court went to considerable trouble in the course of its verdict to explain the credibility and trustworthiness of Blockchain technology itself.”

This is not the first time that Blockchain has played a big role in the production of evidence. Last year Weizhong Bank, Guangzhou Arbitration Commission and Hangzhou Yibi Science and Technology Ltd. Co. jointly built the world’s first Blockchain- supported “arbitration chain”. ™ In addition, the Guangzhou Arbitration Commission issued its first ruling based on an “arbitration chain” in March 20187 — very likely the first to use Blockchain in this way. The ruling also confirmed that transparent and traceable real-time data, provided through Blockchain, is acceptable evidence.

Alongside Baoquan’®, there are other similar platforms in China, including Zhigui”, Yuanben, Banquanjia’, that have implemented Blockchain.

The use of Blockchain in this context is only going to grow: on 28 June 2018, the Hangzhou Internet Court launched a dedicated eevidence platform that offered access to Blockchain-based evidence deposition platforms,® alongside traditional notarization services, signaling the growing confidence in the technology and its ability to assist in litigation. At the same time, the Court issued regulations on its e-evidence platform as well as a document entitled The Rules for Judicial Review of Electronic Data Evidence in Civil Litigation®, which set the specific rules and standards for digital evidence verification.

In order to harmonize the litigation procedures of the Internet Courts in China, the Supreme People’s Court has also issued the Provisions of the Supreme People’s Court on Several Issues Concerning the Trial of Cases by Internet Courts on 6 September 2018.8 In this document, the Supreme Court approves the use of Blockchain in the law of evidence. Article 11 paragraph 2 specifies that “[f]or electronic data submitted by the parties concerned, if collected through electronic signature, trusted timestamping, hash value verification, Blockchain and other evidence collection, and verified with retention and tamper-proof technical means or via the electronic forensics and deposit platform, which are able to prove its authenticity, the Internet Court shall confirm its authenticity.”** This statement by the Supreme Court encourages parties to adopt more cost-effective approaches to compensate for the deficiencies of electronic evidence identification through conventional notarization. This judicial explanation from the Supreme People’s Court, together with PRC e-signature law, civil procedure law and administrative procedure law, potentially sets a new international norm and legal principle in China and other jurisdictions to accept Blockchain-based evidence.

Hard on the heels of the Supreme Court’s decision, the Beijing Internet Court opened on 9 September 2018, and accepted its first case, Douyin v. Baidu. In this case, regarding the right to disseminate video clips via information networks, the claimant entrusted the preservation of relevant evidence to a third-party platform, Zhong Jin Tian Ping, using Blockchain.®*

A few days later, on 18 September 2018, the Hangzhou Internet Court launched China’s first official judicial Blockchain platform, which is jointly developed by public notary offices, the Certification Authority and Registration Authority, forensic evaluation centres and the Court.*® It has already attracted several consortium Blockchain platforms, including Xin Hua Zhi Yun, an online Blockchain-based copyright protection platform jointly established by Alibaba and Xinhua News Agency.’” The intention is to develop the judicial Blockchain platform into a multifaceted Blockchain ecosystem. Potentially, Internet users will only be one click away from safe and tamper-resistant storage for digital evidence which will be judicially recognised by courts.*®