January 11, 2019  Shanghai Law Journal  Page A03: General News on Law

Intern journalist: Zhang Yehe    Correspondent: Chen Yingying

Shanghai Law Journal — As of the end of 2018, Shanghai Intellectual Property Court (hereinafter referred to as SIPC) had commissioned a total of 304 mediations, 123 of which had succeeded, contributing toa success rate of 40.46%.Recently, it is learned that SIPChas beentrying to bring the entrusted mid-litigation mediation system to full use and exploring a mediation mechanism where judges and mediators work side by side. They have successfully mediated 18 cases of first and second instances within a week, increasing the efficiency of dispute resolution and winning the recognition of the concerned parties.The successful mediation of the 18 cases is further practice of the entrusted mid-litigation mediation system. It helps accumulate more experience and further improves the diversedispute resolution mechanism.

Since SIPClaunchedthe entrusted mid-litigation mediation systemin March 2018, it has been actively exploring a coordinating litigation-mediation mechanism where judges and mediators "cooperate and mediate side by side." For example, when handling two dispute cases over a franchise contract, the judge in charge Ling Zongliang learned that the foreign legal representative of the appellant would come to China from Italy to participate in the hearing. Considering that a legal representative has the right of decision upon a mediation, the judge decided to seize the favorable opportunity and arranged for all the concerning parties to have a mid-litigation mediation the day before the hearing. According to the actual circumstances of the cases and with the approval of the concerning parties, SIPC commissioned Shanghai Commercial Mediation Center to send a mediator to preside over the mediation. During the entire process of mediation, the mediator and the judge cooperated with each other, took all the demands of the concerning parties into consideration, and won their recognition. The second-round mediation continued until 7 p.m. when the two concerning parties finally agreed to sign a mediation agreement. The foreign representative of the appellant was able to return to Italy that very day.