The China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) will be closed on January 1, 2020 for the New Year holiday. All official deadlines falling on the above date will be automatically extended to January 2, 2020. Please note that Christmas is not an official holiday in China and the deadlines of China IP matters that fall on December 25, 2019 will not be postponed to December 26, 2019. The upcoming Lunar New Year (Spring Festival) will be January 24 – 30, …
Utility Model Patents: An Overlooked Chinese IP Right
Chinese utility model patents are often overlooked by U.S. applicants when filing patent applications in China. This might be due to a lack of familiarity with them, as the U.S. patent system does not separately provide a similar intellectual property right, and many inventions may not qualify for a UM patent due to limited subject matter eligibility. The China National Intellectual Property Administration grants UM patents only for products. The products “shall be objects manufactured by industrial methods, having definite …
CNIPA Announces Administrative Measures for Collective Patent Examination
The Chinese National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) recently issued Administrative Measures of Collective Patent Examination (pilot) (专利申请集中审查管理办法（试行). The new measures allow for the collective examination of patent applications related to the same technology by the same applicant, thereby potentially expediting examination of groups of patent application and improving consistency of examination of the group applications.
Hong Kong, PRC Launches New Patent System Effective December 19, 2019
Effective December 19, 2019, Hong Kong will launch a new patent system that includes a new “original grant patent” (OGP), substantive examination for short term patents (STPs), and maintains the current re-registration system based on patents from China (CN), the United Kingdom (UK) and the European Patent Office (EPO) that designate the United Kingdom. The new patent system is based on the Patents (Amendment) Ordinance 2016 passed on June 10, 2016 and Patents (General) (Amendment) Rules 2019 issued on March …