Tag Archives: China

Road trip down the Patent Prosecution Highway

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Hilly RoadThe Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) may not be the road most travelled, but by taking a test-drive on it, our very own Helpdesk “Stig” reveals the secret speed of Patent Prosecution that is starting to become more and more popular world-wide.

The PPH scheme, through the sharing of information between patent offices, makes eligible an application whose claims have already been determined to be patentable in a first country, to then undergo an accelerated examination in a second. This is extremely relevant as it can drastically reduce the time taken to gain patent determinability in said second country and so is pertinent to all those SMEs impatient to take advantage of favourable overseas environments, but who also recognise the importance of protecting their IPR. Continue reading “Road trip down the Patent Prosecution Highway” »

Shanghai High People’s Court provides clarity on legality of rewarding and remunerating inventors

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Enforcement smallOn June 25th 2013, the Shanghai High People’s Court’s Guidelines for Hearing Disputes over Rewards and Remunerations for the Inventors or Designers of Service Inventions (hereafter, inter-changeably, the “Shanghai Court Guidelines” and “guidelines”) were posted online. The guidelines provide some useful clarity, especially for businesses operating in Shanghai, as to the legality surrounding inventor remuneration and reward agreements.

For years now, businesses have expressed concern over ambiguity in Chinese law surrounding inventor remuneration. For example, the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China expressed concern over the system in their IPR Working Group’s 2011/2012 Position Paper. Most recently, industry groups have expressed serious concern over the Regulations on Service Inventions (Draft) (hereafter the “Draft Remuneration Regulation”) released by the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) on November 12th 2012. Continue reading “Shanghai High People’s Court provides clarity on legality of rewarding and remunerating inventors” »

Thought the Chinese government will only focus its indigenous-innovation-stimulating efforts on strategic emerging industries? Think again.

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China continues to pursue, perhaps more concertedly then ever, initiatives to foster “indigenous innovation.” This concept – defined as advancing domestic Chinese innovation via “original innovation” (yuanshi chuangxin/原始创新), integrated innovation (combining existing technologies in a new way), and assimilated innovation (making improvements to imported technologies) – was prominently laid out in the National Medium- and Long-Term Plan for the Development of Science and Technology (2006-2020) (hereafter “S&T MLP”), which sets the goal to make China into a world leader in technology by 2050. A variety of initiatives followed the S&T MLP in seeking to further advance its goals, including, most recently, the 12th Five Year Plan for Establishing National Indigenous Innovation Capacity (hereafter the “Plan”) promulgated on May 29th 2013 by China’s State Council. Continue reading “Thought the Chinese government will only focus its indigenous-innovation-stimulating efforts on strategic emerging industries? Think again.” »

Shut the door on slamming

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Slamming SmallWe are getting reports of more and more foreign companies across Asia receiving correspondence which claims that their business’ name is about to be registered as a domain name by someone else, typically along the lines of:

Dear [insert name of Director/Senior Representative – or if less sophisticated – Sir/Madam]

This is Bobby Zhang, Senior Consultant at the domain name registration centre in xxx. We formally received an application from Random Company Inc. to register “Your Company Name” as a network brand with the following domain names: Continue reading “Shut the door on slamming” »

SIPO’s good intentions 2: future designs

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This is a follow up to my last blog post which you can read here. Then, I discussed the major direction of the proposed revisions to the Chinese Patent Law which include the potential for better compensation and evidence gathering for your business. I now focus on how the proposed changes to patent administrative enforcement could affect small businesses in China.

Before we begin, let’s have a brief look at the current administrative enforcement situation for patents in China. Please note that patents in China include design patents, which are equivalent to Registered Community Designs in Europe- they protect the combinations of colour, shape and/or patterns which make your design aesthetically pleasing.

Continue reading “SIPO’s good intentions 2: future designs” »