Special tribunals will be set up to handle intellectual property rights (IPR) disputes and an appeal court in a bid to improve efficiency, the Supreme People's Court (SPC) announced yesterday.

The move will see complex cases relating to civil, administrative and criminal matters dealt with by a "unified" tribunal, rather than spread across different ones, according to the newly issued Guideline on Implementing the Compendium of National Intellectual Property Strategy.

"If an IPR case involved two or three disputes it had to be heard in different tribunals, which was repetitious, wasted procedural costs and compromised judicial efficiency," said Kong Xiangjun, deputy chief judge of IPR tribunals for the SPC.