Chinese judicial blockchain solves patents disputes, it standardizes the threshold of proof and provides court assistance.

As previously mentioned, the 206 System is an AI-based trial-assistance system developed by the ICT company iFlyTek and Shanghai People’s High Court. Initially, it was an integrated criminal-cases processing system with functions of automatically examining and connecting the dots in the evidence chain, matching the case facts with similar cases, sorting out the applicable laws and doctrines, and assisting the judges to apply the law methodically to the key factors in facts as revealed by evidence. Therefore, its full name is “Shanghai intelligent case-handling system for assisting judges in criminal cases.” Now, it has been expanded to cover certain types of civil- and commercial-law cases. Because iFlyTek is a leading company in NLP, the 206 System applies cutting-edge NLP technology to identify the semantic meaning of legal and evidentiary texts. It also uses mature technologies such as Dual Iterative Pattern Relation Extraction (DIPRE) and bootstrapping to simultaneously extract templates and examples from labelled samples and then train the machine to annotate texts automatically. The result is a fully functioning system deployed in Shanghai courts.

In a courtroom equipped with the 206 System, there are telescreens in front of the judge, the prosecutor, the defendant, or the parties in civil cases, and lawyers. With the progress of the trial, relevant information, such as arrest warrants, witness statements, interrogation records, video clips, etc. will be displayed on the screen automatically, prompted by the voice-recognition function of the system. The system not only displays information; it also analyzes the information automatically. After displaying the evidence, it will give an evaluation on whether the evidence forms a chain meeting the statutory standard of proof.

After experimental use in several courts in Shanghai, the 206 System has grown to have both a police version and a prosecution version. The police and procuratorial versions of the 206 System codify procedural rules and evidentiary standards in algorithms that essentially screen the legality of criminal investigation and prosecutorial practice before the trial. For example, the procuratorial version incorporates thresholds for the arrest and prosecution of 71 types of offences; an arrest decision against the no-arrest recommendation by the machine may require a justification or cause a subsequent accountability check. The different branches have then been connected since December 2018, enabling the complete process of criminal justice in Shanghai to be conducted online, from case filing, entry of investigation results, approval for arrest, prosecutorial review, prosecution, trial, conviction, sentencing, to commutation and parole.

The 206 System, with multiple functions, has been granted patents and copyrights in China. Its four distinctive functions are as follows. (1) Evidence standards and evidence rules guidance: this function provides the case-handling personnel with standardized, digitalized, and checklist-styled guidelines in evidence collection and fixation, which are easy for them to grasp and follow, so as to prevent the prominent problems in this procedure, such as a lack of uniformly applicable evidence standards among public-security organs, procuratorates, and courts, non-standard case-handling conduct, etc. (2) Evidence review: the 206 System can review, verify, and supervise both the single evidence and the evidence chain of the whole case, and remind the case-handling investigators and officers about the problems in evidence in a timely way, so as to ensure that the factual evidence of the cases under investigation, review, and prosecution can stand the test of law. (3) Interrogation guidance with key factors: with its questioning/interrogating models for different types of cases, the System can provide guidance to police officers during questioning or interrogating. Besides, it can help users to detect contradictions of the confessions in time, so as to guarantee the comprehensiveness, legality, and accuracy of interrogation transcripts. (4) Intelligent court trial assistance: through the use of AI and other high-tech to assist the court trial, the 206 System can ensure that “the facts of the case are ascertained in court” and “the evidence is determined in court,” so as to truly implement the policy of “making the trials the center of judicial process,” and to protect the litigant’s right of action, as well as the people’s right to know, participate, express, and supervise, etc. One of the leaders in developing the 206 System proudly said: “It can be said that the development and application of this System are in the leading position in the world.”57