China is one step closer to getting a specialized IP court after a senior official from the State Intellectual Property Office told the annual session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) that present judicial procedures for safeguarding IP rights were "not efficient enough".

Zhang Qin, SIPO's vice-director, told the consultative body last week that litigation costs would be lower if IP disputes were handled by a specialist appeals court once a local court had handed down judgment in the first instance. His comments were reported by Xinhua, China's official news agency.

An IP court is one of 20 issues being discussed by the National Intellectual Property Strategy Office, set up last year to devise IP policies for China. SIPO is playing a leading role in the cross-departmental strategy group.

But sources in SIPO say that the plans remain tentative and are unlikely to be approved or put into practice soon.

Qiao Dexi, former head of SIPO's legal affairs department and now a partner at King & Wood said that a specialist IP court could be a useful development for IP owners.

But there is still no consensus about what form an IP court should take. One possibility is that it would just hear patent cases, while another is that it would accept all appeals from civil, administrative and criminal cases dealing with intellectual property. Officials are studying systems used in other countries.

"It is a very complicated issue," says Chen Xuemin of Zhongzi Law Office. "Many IP specialists are in favour, but not everybody. Some courts in cities like Shanghai and Guangzhou don't necessarily want IP appeal cases centralized in one court in Beijing."

Although the government focused more attention on IP last year, setting up an IP strategy group and launching a series of anti-counterfeiting campaigns, IP disputes are not the only ones that are putting China's judicial system under pressure. There has also been a rise in lawsuits relating to shareholder and labour rights, for example. As a result proponents may find it difficult to argue that a special system should be set up to handle IP disputes.

Any proposals for an IP court would need to be approved by the National People's Congress, China's parliamentary body which meets once a year.