The USPTO had once again kindly made available its non-official translations of recently proposed IP legislation in China.

The following are links to three tranches of translations of the recently published draft revisions to CNIPA’s patent examination guidelines, which were released for public comment on October 31, 2022. The comment period closes on December 15, 2022. The last two tranches deal with patent term adjustment and patent term extension. Aaron Wininger’s comments on the draft are found here. The draft revisions appear to continue the (necessary) “cart before the horse” approach of revising patent examination guidelines in advance of the much-delayed patent law implementing regulations.

Proposed draft revisions to China’s Plant Variety Protection Regulations were also released by the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) on November 21, 2022, with comments due December 22, 2022. The MOA announcement of the draft notes that MoA itself is “taking the lead” on drafting the regulations. The circumstances behind the release of this draft are somewhat unusual. These regulations were originally scheduled only for preparatory work and were not among the list of regulations that were to be finalized in the 2022 State Council Legislative Plan (July 15, 2022). Although MoJ has generally been tasked with the drafting of regulations since a 2018 reorganization of the State Council by the National People’s Congress (see the 第十三届全国人民代表大会第一次会议关于国务院机构改革方案的决定), this draft is in the hands of MoA.

USPTO has kindly provided us with non-official translations of the proposed regulations and of the accompanying explanation.

I also hope to publish comments from trade associations on these drafts as soon as they are made available.