Saudi Gazette report

RIYADH — Commercial courts and departments will start handling copyrights and patents related cases starting next month. The cases will be heard in commercial courts, as well as commercial departments inside general courts across the Kingdom.

Meanwhile, the cases filed before that date at the Committee for Examine Patents on Inventions Lawsuits and the committee for copyrights protection, will be resolved through those two committees.

The Supreme Judicial Council approved the shift and the Justice Ministry worked on a plan to train judges on copyrights system and how to handle patents disputes inside commercial courts.

“We want to ensure providing the best judicial principles and training on intellectual property system based on research and study,” the ministry said.

“We are collecting the previous work done by related committees that looked into those cases in order to prepare for the shift.”

Previously, there were two committees that handled intellectual property rights related cases; the committee for examine patents on invention lawsuits, and the committee to handle violations of the copyrights protection system.