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GUANGZHOU, May 11-- In the name of the U.S.-based parent company, an agent of the Universal Pictures (Shanghai) Trading Company Ltd. made a special trip to Guangzhou, capital of south China's Guangdong Province. The visit was about expressing gratitude for the support to protect the company's intellectual property rights (IPRs) by the Guangzhou Intellectual Property Court. The company filed a lawsuit against a Chinese company, charging the latter for selling products with unauthorized pictures of the "Minions", a famous cartoon character and trademark of Universal City Studios LLC, the parent company. The defendant was ordered by the court to destroy and stop producing and selling infringing products with a compensation of 500,000 yuan (about 73,000 U.S. dollars). This is just one of the many foreign-related IPR cases that Chinese courts have handled. In recent years, Guangdong has become one of the preferred places in China of IPR litigation for multinationals, with many seen in the court, including Dyson, Microsoft, Apple, Qualcomm, Samsung, Philips and Mitsubishi. The courts in Guangdong concluded 317 second instance civil IPR cases involving foreign interests in 2018, an increase of 40.89 percent year on year, according to statistics from the Guangdong Provincial Higher People's Court. China has continuously contributed to the global intellectual property protection efforts by strengthening the rule of law and establishing a sound and healthy judicial environment, experts said. | 
