Examination Guide

Updates on Hong Kong Patents Examination Guidelines in 2024

29 February 2024

The Intellectual Property Department of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China (HKIPD) has recently made several updates to the Hong Kong Patents Examination Guidelines, effective from 26 January, 2024. These changes mainly clarify and reflect the Registry’s current practices regarding patent examination for Standard Patent (R) […]

CNIPA further clarifies how it counts “delays” when calculating Patent Term Adjustment (PTA) in the new Draft Examination Guidelines and how it affects international applicants

12 April 2023

At the end of October 2022, the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) released a new draft amendment of the Patent Examination Guidelines[1] (hereinafter referred to as the “New Draft”) to the new Chinese Patent Law that came into effect in 2021. We highlight two key amendments below. 1. The starting date for calculating PTA […]

Foreigners Beware: China Proposes Requiring IP Made Using Exported Chinese Genetic Resources to be Co-Owned by Chinese Collaborators

22 March 2023

Proposed Examination Guidelines for the New Chinese Patent Law – Topic 2: Genetic Resource Restriction How Will the Tightened Genetic Resource Restrictions Affect Your IP In 2019-2021, China’s Ministry of Science and Technology (“MOST”, or the Science Ministry) established several laws and regulations with respect to biosafety[1] and human genetic resources management[2] (collectively referred as […]

FOLLOW UP: Amendments to the China Patent Examination Guidelines in 2022 – Part 1: New rules for designs in view of China signing onto the Hague Agreement

4 January 2023

Since the publication of our earlier article about China signing onto the Hague Agreement, some of our Hong Kong clients have expressed interest in taking advantage of the Hague international design application system, i.e., filing a Hague international design application with the CNIPA (Chinese National Intellectual Property Administration) as a receiving office (RO). Up until […]

Amendments to the China Patent Examination Guidelines in 2022 - Part 1: New rules for designs in view of China signing onto the Hague Agreement

2 December 2022

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 […]

China Proposes New Examination Guidelines for Utility Models

24 November 2022

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 […]

China Announcing More Proposed Amendments to the Examination Guidelines in 2022

17 November 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 […]