Patent Law

Inventive Step for an Enantiomer over a Racemate: “L-ornidazole” Patent Invalidation Case

27 November 2023

Each year, China’s Supreme People’s Court (SPC) issues its annual “Judgment Digests”, which includes a list of “48 typical cases” highlighting representative SPC decisions in the previous year. The Judgment Digests help us understand more about the SPC’s judicial ideology, trial concepts, and adjudication methods in dealing with difficult and sophisticated legal issues as well […]

Announcement: Implementation Regulations (Rules) of the Chinese Patent Law have been Approved

10 November 2023

On November 3rd, 2023, the Premier of the State Council, Li Qiang, chaired a regular meeting where the "Implementation Regulations of the Patent Law of the People's Republic of China (Revised Draft)" was reviewed and approved. This is great news, as we have been waiting quite some time for these Regulations (Rules) to be approved (see […]

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 […]

Introducing the New USPTO Cancer Moonshot Expedited Examination Pilot Program

10 January 2023

Starting from February 1, 2023, the USPTO will begin the new Cancer Moonshot Expedited Examination Pilot Program that advances out-of-turn applications that are directed to oncology or smoking cessation. This new program will replace the Cancer Immunotherapy Pilot Program that has been in place since 2016, and covers more technologies than only cancer immunotherapies. Applications […]

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 […]

Chinese Courts Cares More About Patent Quality Now (A Doctrine of Equivalents Story)

13 December 2022

There is no doubt that the drafting quality of a patent can be crucial in determining the success (or failure!) of the patent during litigation. However, due to various reasons, patents often fail to use the right drafting strategies that best protect the invention. Too often, inexperienced or unsophisticated patent drafters merely listen to an […]

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 […]

< 1 2 3 >