This year, China stepped further onto the international scene by signing on as a member of the Hague Agreement. The Hague Agreement is an international registration system allowing applicants to file a single international design application in a single language to obtain protection in over 100 designated member countries. The US has been a member since May 13, 2015. China joined this year. On 5 February 2022[1], the Government of China deposited its instrument of accession to the 1999 Geneva Act of the Hague Agreement, being the 68th contracting party to the 1999 Act and 77th member of the Hague Union. This harmonizes certain aspects of China’s design patent law…
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China Proposes New Examination Guidelines for Utility Models
The Utility Model (UM) in China has always been a popular choice for patent filing due to its relatively low cost and speed of prosecution. The UM prosecution only includes a preliminary examination, which is essentially a mini (stripped down) version of an invention application’s substantive examination.[1] With the simplified examination process, UMs are typically granted without issue. Unfortunately, this may soon not be the case anymore. Heightened Inventiveness Standard + Formal Search The CNIPA[2] has recently published an official letter in response to a Proposal from a CPPCC member regarding problematic patents and malicious competition based thereon in the lithium battery industry.[3][4] The key messages stated in these letters…
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China Announcing More Proposed Amendments to the Examination Guidelines in 2022
It’s been a year and a half since the new Chinese Patent Law came into effect (1 June 2021). Although various versions of draft Examination Guidelines have been released, thus far no official finalized versions have been confirmed. On October 31, 2022, yet another new list of proposed amendments was published[1], this time consolidating the previous sets of proposed changes from 2020 to 2021 to the Examination Guidelines. As this version looks closer to a finalized version, we are cautiously optimistic that an official set of guidelines may soon be released. As such, we think it’s worth looking a bit more closely into this current draft version. Below are a…
