GUANGZHOU, April 24 (Xinhua) -- The Guangdong Provincial Higher People's Court handled 71,000 intellectual property rights (IPR) cases in 2017, up 64.7 percent from the pervious year.

According to a white paper on IPR protection in Guangdong published by the court on Monday, disputes over patents, copyrights and unfair competition have grown rapidly as has the amount of damages paid to rights holders.

Average damages in trademark and copyright cases have grown by 25 percent and 50 percent, respectively, since three years ago.

In 2017, a Shenzhen-based garment company was ordered to pay three million yuan (about 476,000 U.S. dollars) in damages after the court ruled that it infringed the trademark rights of Burberry.

The IPR market is booming in Guangdong, which is an economic powerhouse in China. In 2017, the GDP of the province was 9 trillion yuan, accounting for around 10 percent of the national total.