Breaking News! We finally have more details about the new Chinese Patent Law which will go into effect on June 1, 2021. The full set of measure can be found at this link. Below are some pertinent points. No Implementation Rules . . . . Yet The new Implementation Rules will not be available by June 1, 2021. Accordingly, some submissions to the CNIPA made on or after June 1, 2021 will not be examined until after the Implementation Rules are out. Patent Term Adjustment for Patent Office Delay Applicants can request for patent term adjustment for any case granted after June 1, 2021. If applicants have already received a…
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China Top 10 Cases of 2020 – CNIPA Upholds Second Medical Use Patent from University of Bordeaux
The development of China’s approach to patents, especially those in the pharmaceutical and biotech space, has been fascinating to watch. Those of us who have practiced in the area for a long time have been frustrated by the Chinese patent office’s overly strict rules regarding patentability (e.g., high data support standard and refusal to consider post-filing data), while at the same time being more lax on enforcement. Things have changed a lot in the past five years as China has revamped its patent system in numerous ways. The creation of an entirely new IP court system, the introduction of a new patent law (only the 4th revision in its 40+…
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China’s Newest Examination Guidelines: Inventive Step for Biological / Life Science Inventions (Part III)
This is Part III of a three-part series summarizing the Examination Guidelines that were released by the CNIPA on January 15, 2021, one year to the date of Phase 1 of the US and China Economic and Trade Agreement. That agreement included specific provisions where China “shall permit pharmaceutical patent applicants to rely on supplemental data to satisfy relevant requirements for patentability, including sufficiency of disclosure and inventive step . . .” (Article 1.10). Furthermore, these new Guidelines also introduce a more rigorous approach to inventive step (to avoid Examiner hindsight!) for chemical and biological inventions, including a number of helpful examples. Part I of this series covered examples on…
