Chinese legislators on Wednesday voiced overwhelming support to a separate court system dedicated to cases involving intellectual property rights (IPR).

The idea was introduced in a Tuesday report delivered by Chief Justice Wang Shengjun to the ongoing bimonthly session of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC).

Currently, different divisions within Chinese courts handle civil, administrative and criminal IPR proceedings respectively, which often result in a waste of resources or conflicts between different procedures.

To address the growing number and complexity of IPR cases, Wang suggested setting up independent IPR courts outside the existing system.

Chen Sixi, a member of the NPC Standing Committee, noted that the precedents on setting special maritime courts and military courts are successful and the experience may work for IPR issues.

Establishing IPR courts may help promote judicial services as well as improve credibility of the court system, Chen said during Wednesday's panel discussion.

Independent IPR courts are the only solution to conflicts between procedures, according to Dai Yuzhong, a member of the Committee for Internal and Judicial Affairs under the NPC Standing Committee.

Other suggestions included optimizing the administrative management on IPR protection and engaging more experts to help judges on technology issues in IPR cases.

From 2008 to June 2012, Chinese courts received 226,753 IPR-related cases and concluded 208,653, said the Chief Justice, adding that China had 2,731 IPR judges working in 420 regular courts by June. Endi

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