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| On the “Divergence” of Jurisdiction Rules in Intellectual Property Infringement Disputes: History, Reflection, and Reconstruction |
| Chen Hangping Pan Yu |
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Abstract The territorial jurisdiction rules for civil tort disputes adopt a dichotomous interpretative framework in defining the “place of tort”, which encompasses both the place where the tortious act is committed and the place where the tortious consequences occur. However, the relevant rules for intellectual property (IP) infringement disputes deviate from this framework, presenting a trend of divergence that weakens or even negates the legal status of the place where the tortious consequences occur as a valid basis for jurisdiction. The purpose of these divergent rules is to avoid uncertainties and fragmentation in territorial jurisdiction, as well as abuses such as plaintiffs arbitrarily establishing jurisdictional nexus. However, this divergence not only renders jurisdictional rules inconsistent and fragmented, but also contradicts the guiding spirit of jurisdiction rules for IP infringement disputes, ultimately causing vacillation and conflict in the practical application of the law. More importantly, the divergent approach violates the provisions of higher-level laws and leads to an imbalance in the per capita caseloads among different courts. Therefore, the territorial jurisdiction rules for IP infringement disputes should be reconstructed toward convergence. Under the guiding principle of “simplifying complexity, unifying application, and accommodating particularities”, relevant judicial interpretations should be amended and applied. The place where the tortious consequences occur and the place where the tortious act is committed hold the same hierarchical legal validity, allowing parties to freely choose between them. However, considering the unique nature of IP infringement disputes, the “place where tortious consequences occur” still requires appropriate restriction. It should be strictly limited to the place where the direct consequences of the alleged infringing act occur and the domicile of the infringed party. On this basis, the definition of the place of consequences for IP infringements occurring outside of information networks can be appropriately expanded to include the storage locations of infringing goods and the locations where such goods are seized and detained. At a macro level, the establishment of civil litigation procedures for intellectual property must not violate the basic principles of civil procedural law. IP adjudication departments should break away from inherent, one-sided notions and avoid drifting further down a path of differential treatment and arbitrary action. This paper aims to resolve the dilemma of legal application conflicts and the imbalanced distribution of judicial resources caused by the divergence of territorial jurisdiction rules in IP infringement disputes. By exploring the rule-reconstruction path of convergence, it provides robust theoretical support and institutional solutions for improving the civil litigation jurisdiction system. The research methods employed in this paper include literature review, historical analysis, and normative analysis. Theoretically, this paper explicitly proposes, for the first time, the evolutionary path of reconstructing the territorial jurisdiction rules for IP infringement from divergence to convergence. At the rule level, it constructs a targeted, two-way scheme that concurrently applies appropriate restriction and expansion to the “place where tortious consequences occur”. Macroscopically, it profoundly reveals the jurisprudential baseline that IP litigation procedures must strictly return to the fundamental principles of civil procedural law.
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Published: 20 February 2026
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