BEIJING - Chinese authorities said on Thursday that the country strengthened intellectual property rights (IPR) protection in 2012, with courts handling more IPR-related cases and police cracking down on IPR violations involving billions of US dollars.

Last year, local Chinese courts received a total of 87,419 IPR-related civil cases, up 45.99 percent year on year, according to data released by a state IPR work group involving 28 government departments.

Procuratorates nationwide handled 17,244 IPR violation cases and approved arrests of suspects in 5,256 cases, up 203.1 percent and 20.3 percent year on year, respectively, the work group said at a press conference.

During the same period, the police investigated 44,000 cases of counterfeiting that involved goods valued at 11.31 billion yuan ($1.8 billion), while customs officials confiscated over 15,000 batches of infringing products.

State copyright authorities also shut down 183 websites last year in a campaign against online IPR infringement and piracy.

Huang Qing, a senior official with the State Intellectual Property Office, said more efforts will be put into building a long-term mechanism against IPR violations.