On February 14, 2022, the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) has announced a crackdown on the malicious filing of trademarks for Olympic mascots and athletes for “infringing on the personality rights and other legitimate rights and interests of others, has caused significant adverse social impact, and damaged the good image of China’s strict protection of intellectual property rights.” CNIPA rejected 429 trademark applications, including those for Eileen Gu (谷爱凌 and homonyms). CNIPA also cancelled, ex officio, 43 trademarks, 20 …
China to Cease Issuing Paper Patent Certificates – Request Them Before March 1, 2022
While the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) ceased automatically issuing paper patent certificates in 2020, patentees could still request a paper certificate. However, per CNIPA announcement 472 released February 11, 2022, CNIPA will no longer accept requests for paper certificates as of March 1, 2022. Accordingly, patentees looking for “old school” hard copy patent certificates need to request them by the end of February 2022. Similarly, the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) proposed to cease issuing paper patent …
China Remains Top Patent Cooperation Treaty Filer in 2021
Per statistics released February 10, 2022 by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), China remains the top filer of Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) applications for the third year in a row. Chinese applicants filed 69,540 PCT applications in 2021, an increase of 0.9% versus 2020. This was followed by the U.S. (59,570 applications, +1.9%), Japan (50,260 applications, –0.6%), the Republic of Korea (20,678 applications, +3.2%) and Germany (17,322 applications, –6.4%). A PCT application is a single international application that gives …
China’s Supreme People’s Court: New Evidence Can be Entered in Patent Administrative Litigation for Invalidation
In case no. (2021）最高法知行终93号 recently highlighted by the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) of China in their WeChat account, the SPC held that in administrative litigation against the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) for a patent invalidation decision the lower court can consider new evidence introduced by the patentee. However, petitioners seeking invalidation generally cannot submit new evidence during litigation.