The American Intellectual Property Law Association has once again made its comments on proposed changes to Chinese IP legislation (laws, regulations, rules, examination guidelines,  judicial interpretations, etc. ) available to this blog.

Attached are the AIPLA’s response to the request for comments to revision of the trademark law in China (商标法修改公开征集意见) first published by SAIC.  SAIC is now a part of SAMR – the State Administration for Market Regulation. It published a public solicitation of ideas for revising the trademark law on April 2, 2018, with a due date for comments of July 31, 2018.  AIPLA’s comments primarily focus on providing clarifying and strengthening legislation regarding bad faith trademark applications and registrations.

AIPLA has also commented on the proposed patent validity rules of the SPC on administrative patent litigation (最高人民法院关于审理专利授权 确权行政案件若干问题的规定(公开征求意见稿)).  This judicial interpretation was previously discussed in this blog, with a translation by the Anjie law firm.  Additionally, here is the Chinese version of these comments.

Finally, AIPLA has commented on the special approval procedure for innovative medical devices (创新医疗设备特别批准程序（修订稿)) which was first published for public comment on May 7, with a closing date of June 15.   Here is a text of the draft approval procedures in Chinese.

In a related legislative development, the recent dismissal of party secretary Bi Jinquan of SAMR due to the tainted vaccine scandal may also impact BI’s spearheaded reforms, including pharma-related IP reforms (patent linkage, regulatory data protection, etc).   Commissioner Bi formerly served as the leader of China’s Food and Drug Administration.  An August 20, 2018 notice of the State Council  (no. 83) on deepening reform in China’s medical sector ominously omits any mention of patents or IP reform.  国务院办公厅关于印发深化医药卫生体制改革2018年下半年重点工作任务的通知, (国办发〔2018〕83号.  The next place where we might see the continued life in these reforms is in the proposed revisions to China’s patent law, which the National People’s Congress had tabled for completion by the end of 2018 as noted in its 2018 workplan  (全国人大常委会2018年工作要点).  To meet the NPC’s deadline, a first draft of the revised patent law is needed as early as late August/early September 2018.  One much anticipated pharma-related concern in the new draft, which would also support China’s efforts to develop both an innovative and high-quality pharma sector, is the incorporation of “artificial infringement” by which a request for regulatory approval would be deemed an infringing act in order to support a patent linkage regime.

The above photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND.