Snippets of Court Cases, Provisions, and Key Observations about China’s IP Landscape Seminal Cases by the SPC Recently, the Intellectual Property Division of the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) issued a list of seminal (精品) cases. Although China is not a case law country, such seminal cases issued by the SPC have high guiding impact for similar cases in the future, so they are still worthy of attention. One of the seminal cases ((2020) 最高法知民终699号) is very interesting. It involves a set of “same day applications”, i.e. an invention patent and utility model (UM) patent directed towards the same invention filed on the same day. The key issue is: if the…
- China, Court Cases, Courts, EIP Coffee Break, EIP Patent 101 Corner, prosecution, Supreme People's Court
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What is the difference between an Invention Patent and a Utility Model Patent?
There are two types of patent protection in China. Invention patents (similar to a US utility patent) have a term of 20 years from the date of filing and may be granted for both methods and products. Utility model patents (similar to a petty patent) may be granted in China for technical solutions that relate to shapes or structures of a product, and have a term of 10 years from the date of filing. Utility model applications are subject to preliminary examination to check for compliance with formal requirements, novelty, unity of invention and patentable subject matter. Invention patent applications are subject to search and examination similar to those conducted…
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CHINA: New Patent Examination Guidelines Now Available for Public Comment
Two months after the new Chinese Patent law came into effect, the CNIPA has released a new set of Patent Examination Guidelines (proposed version) for public comments on Aug 3, 2021. Here are the explanation of the amendments (Chinese only). Here is the full set of proposed amendments (Chinese only). Briefly, the new amendment focuses on the following points: We will study these in detail and will focus more closely on points 1-5 in subsequent articles. Yolanda Wang is a Principal, Chinese Patent Attorney, and Chinese Patent Litigator at Eagle IP, a Boutique Patent Firm with offices in Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Macau. This article is for general informational purposes…