China: Draft Amendments to Patent Law Released for Comment

Draft Amendments to the Chinese Patent Law were released for public comment on July 2020. Major aims of the proposed revision are strengthening patent protection, fostering innovation and improving the legal framework. Main revision include as follows.

●Introduction of Partial designs ●Introduction of domestic priority period of 6 months for design applications ●Extension of patent term for designs to 15 years ●Extension of period to submit copy of priority document for patents/utility models from three months to sixteen months ●A disclosure made within six months before filing of a patent application will not destroy the "novelty" of the patent if the disclosure is made in response to a national emergency or an unusual circumstance surrounding the public interest.

●Extension of statutory limitation on initiating a patent infringement lawsuit from two years to three years ●Deletion of the minimum amount of "100,000 yuan" for statutory compensation Under the current patent law, the statutory compensation for patent infringement is capped in a range going from a minimum amount of 100,000 yuan to 5,000,000 yuan. In this revised Draft, the minimum amount of 100,000 yuan for statutory compensation is deleted. The reason is that, in practice, a considerable proportion of patents (mainly utility models and designs) have low market value, the amount of 100,000 yuan is too high, which is too heavy to the parties concerned.

●Extension of Pharmaceutical patent term The patentee can apply for an extension of a patent term to compensate for unreasonable delays in the granting of the patent, except for unreasonable delay caused by the applicant.. This extension applies if the invention patent is not granted within four years from the date of application and three years after the date of the request for substantive examination.

The China National IP Administration (CNIPA) can restore a maximum of five years to the patent of a new drug approved in China to compensate for commercialization delays caused by regulatory review and approval upon the request of the patent holder; and the total patent life for the new drug cannot exceed 14 years from the new drug’s marketing authorization approval date. Source: http://www.law-lib.com/fzdt/newshtml/20/20200704095544.htm