Exciting new changes continue to happen with the Chinese Patent Office (CNIPA). On November 12, 2019, the CNIPA published a new set of amendments to Part II Chapter 9 of the Patent Examination Guidelines (“Draft”) and requested public comment by December 11, 2019. In summary, the new guidelines clarify how emerging technologies involving artificial intelligence, Internet +, big data and blockchain should be examined. More specifically, the Draft provides examination guidelines for inventions comprising certain abstract features such as algorithms, business methods and rules. Examination Criteria Accordingly to the newly amended guidelines in the Draft, when determining patent eligibility, novelty or inventive step (Articles 25, 2, and 22 respectively),…
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Major and Exciting Changes to China’s Patent Law [Fourth Amendment to China’s Patent Law]
Major changes are on the horizon for China’s Patent Law, which will see an overhaul in many areas as early as this year (2019). On January 4, 2019, the National People’s Congress in China published the latest draft of the Fourth Amendment to China’s Patent Law. Several draft amendments have been released for public comment in the past several years, starting from 2012 to this most recent one in 2019. The period for public comment just closed on February 3, 2019. The goal is to implement this amendment in 2019. As a whole, these proposed changes address a lot of the criticisms people have had regarding the strength of IP…
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Finally a unified “Court of Appeal” for technology IP in China
On October 26, 2018, China’s Supreme People’s Court (“SPC”) received approval to establish a specialized intellectual property court within the SPC to handle appeal cases involving technology-related IP for both civil (e.g., patent infringement) and administrative (e.g., patent invalidity) judgments. Technology-related IP includes invention patents, utility models, new plant species, IC design, trade secret, software, and anti-trust cases. [1] On December 28, 2018, the SPC announced the opening of this new SPC IP Court on January 1, 2019, and laid out some details surrounding how things would work [2]. We have summarized some of the details below. The SPC IP Court is based in Beijing and its judgments, rulings, mediations,…
