A Chinese robot vacuum company digs up “hidden evidence” to successfully invalidate a patent owned by its biggest competitor. Highlights Background With the growth of online shopping, it is easier than ever to provide evidence of a sale when the product is still being sold on the market. But what if the product is no longer being sold? It’s much more challenging to prove the original disclosure date for a secondhand item, especially in a jurisdiction like China, which has very stringent notarization and legalization1 requirements for introducing evidence into a proceeding. The case below demonstrates an example of how one major Chinese robot company successfully dug up and introduced…
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A More Detailed Overview of China’s Patent Term Extension (PTE) System
Although PTE has been in the Chinese Patent Law since the 4th Amendment of the law came into effect June 1, 2021, we didn’t really know the exact details of how it operated until the Implementation Regulations and Examination Guidelines (“Implementation Regulations”) were finally released in December 2023. New Rules 77-84 in the Implementation Regulations discuss patent term compensation due to regulatory delay (“PTE”). In this article, we consolidate our summary about PTE based on these latest updates. Highlights Patent Term Extension (PTE) Article 42.3 of the Patent Law states that “[i]n order to compensate for the time taken for the review and approval process before the marketing of a…
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Everything you need to know about Patent Term Adjustment (PTA) in China
We previously discussed patent term compensation for patent office delay (‘Patent Term Adjustment’ or ‘PTA’) when such new system was introduced in the Fourth Amendment of the Chinese Patent Law (2020), as well as in the different versions of the Draft Examination Guidelines released in 2021 and 2022. In this article, we consolidate everything you need to know based on the latest updates regarding PTA in the Implementation Regulations and Examination Guidelines, which were just released in late 2023. Patent Term Adjustment (PTA) Article 42.2 of the Patent Law states that “[w]here a patent right for an invention is granted after the expiration of four years from the filing date and after…
