The Internet has become the second space in human life, changing people’s production and lifestyle, refreshing the concept of law, judicial practice and public demand for court services. The characteristics of virtuality, cross-regionality, and decentralization of the Internet have created enormous challenges to the existing legal theory and judicial system. Parties who are used to the traditional judicial rules and litigation methods are facing high cost and long process for distant disputes, which is not efficient at all, thus an online solution channel is in high need. These facts have made the Central Committee in China decide to set up more Internet court.

On July 6, 2018, the Central Committee for Deepening Reform in China reviewed and approved the “Proposal for the Establishment of the Beijing Internet Court and the Guangzhou Internet Court”, which will be the second and third internet court. One year ago, on August 18, China established the first Internet court in the whole world, The Hangzhou Internet Court, the city where Jack Ma is from and where the headquarters of Alibaba are located. The court has been a pioneer in the national big data deep-use e-evidence delivery platform.

Since its operation on February 9, 2018, it has delivered 4,778 times with 88% success rate. It has initiated the asynchronous trial mode and revolutionized the traditional trial mode, to enable parties and judges to participate in trials at different time periods and to complete litigation in an asynchronous manner. From May 1, 2017, to April 15, 2018, the Hangzhou Internet Court accepted a total of 7372 cases involving six types of network-related cases and concluded 4,532 cases. The online filing rate was as high as 96%, and the related party cases were 100% online. The online trial took an average of 25 minutes and the online trial averaged 46 days.

The Internet Court has jurisdiction over the following Internet-related cases, as can be predicted for the Beijing Internet Court and the Guangzhou Internet Court: 1) The dispute over online shopping contracts; 2) The dispute over network service contracts；3) The dispute over online shopping products liabilities; 4) The dispute over the ownership of network copyright and infringement; 5) the dispute over Internet domain name; 6) The dispute over Internet microfinance loan contracts; 7) The dispute over infringements upon others’ personality right.

In conclusion, the Internet Court help the clients and courts to complete the entire process online, including prosecution, filing, evidence, court, referee, and implementation, which serves to achieve convenient litigation, save judicial resources and enables the parties to complete the lawsuit in zero time transit and with zero travel expenses. It, indeed, saves a large amount of money and solves the problems very quickly.

Author: Yaru Ren (LL.M. Heffels Spiegeler Avocaten)

 

Sources:
https://www.chinacourt.org/article/detail/2018/05/id/3313389.shtml (Visiting time: 19/07/2018)
http://www.netcourt.gov.cn/portal/main/domain/index.htm (Visiting time: 19/07/2018)
http://www.netcourt.gov.cn/portal/main/domain/index.htm?lang=En (Visiting time: 19/07/2018)
http://www.wenming.cn/xj_pd/ssrd/201709/t20170906_4413178.shtml (Visiting time: 19/07/2018)
http://rmfyb.chinacourt.org/paper/html/2017-08/19/content_129146.htm?div=-1 (Visiting time: 19/07/2018)