Judicial local protectionism in China: An empirical study of IP cases

On the other hand, no significant impact of plaintiff location on trial outcome is found in appeals rulings for the IP cases. Instead, the appellate courts are found to redress the local protectionism problem in the first instance rulings in the PSC cases, thus offering support for the argument that the case law developed by the People's Supreme Court aims at providing correctional mechanisms at the higher level to remedy the wrongs perpetrated at the lower level judiciary. The empirical results using the larger five-province sample, however, fail to find the rectifying effect of the appellate courts, suggesting that the goal of the PSC has yet to be achieved in many Chinese regions. These findings provide new insights for the relationship between law and development.