Category Archives: AIPLA

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A Potpourri of AIPLA Legislative Comments — And Other Developments

potpourri

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 had 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 medica 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 the SAMR due the tainted vaccine scandal may also impact reforms that BI had spearheaded, which included 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).  A first draft of the revised patent law is needed as early as late August/early September 2018 in order to meet the NPC’s deadline.  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 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.

 

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

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SIPO Publishes Proposed Revisions to Patent Examination Guidelines

On October 27, 2016, the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO)  published the  Draft (For Public Comment) of Revisions to the Patent Examination Guidelines.  The Chinese text is available here. Comments on the draft should be submitted before November 27.

 In the important area of post filing data supplementation for pharmaceutical inventions, the proposed revisions clarify that such supplementation is permissible where “the technical effect to be proved by the supplemental experimental data shall be that which can be obtained in the contents of the [original] application disclosure by one who is ordinarily skilled in the art.” 对于申请日之后补交的实验数据，审查员应当予以审查。补交实验数据所证明的技术效果应当是所属技术领域的技术人员能够从专利申请公开的内容中得到的。

 The examination guidelines also loosen the standards for obtaining business method patents if there is a technical element to the novel business method.  Presumably these inventions were previously denied patentability on the basis that they were intellectual rules or methods under Article 25 of the Patent Law.  The proposed guidelines state:

 Claims related to business methods that contain both business rules and methods and technical characteristics, shall not be excluded from the possibilities of obtaining patent rights be Article 25 of the Patent Law. 涉及商业模式的权利要求，如果既包含商业规则和方法的内容，又包含技术特征，则不应当依据专利法第二十五条排除其获得专利权的可能性。

The examination guidelines also appear to loosen the standards for obtaining software enabled inventions:

In the second line of Part II, chapter IX, section 5.2, paragraph 1, the third sentence of the Patent Examination Guidelines are amended from, “and describe in detail which parts of the computer program are to be performed and how to perform them” to provide that “The components may not only include hardware, but may also include programs.” 将《专利审查指南》第二部分第九章第5.2节第1段第3句中的“并详细描述该计算机程序的各项功能是由哪些组成部分完成以及如何完成这些功能”修改为“所述组成部分不仅可以包括硬件，还可以包括程序”.

Postscripts (Nov 18 and 28, 2016):

1.  Here’s Jacob Schindler’s October 31, 2016 commentary in IAM on this blog, and  here’s another blog comparing US and Chinese software patent developments. 

2.  Here are AIPLA’s comments on the proposed revisions to the patent examination guidelines (Nov. 25, 2016 – bilingual).

 

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GAI and ABA Publish Their AUCL Comments

Attached are the comments of the American Bar Association Sections on International Law and Antitrust Law  on the proposed draft revisions of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law (AUCL)  as well as comments of the Global Antitrust Institute of George Mason University.

The ABA’s comments are comprehensive – addressing IP issues (including trade secret and trade dress), advertising law, competition law issues and commercial bribery.  GAI’s  comments are focused on the interface between the AUCL and the Antimonopoly Law.

Regarding the overlap with the AML, the GAI advocates that “any provisions in the AUCL that relate to conduct covered by traditional antitrust laws, or conduct covered by China’s Anti-Monopoly Law, be either omitted entirely or revised to limit liability to situations when there is substantial evidence of harm to competition.  … The AUCL should be implemented in a manner consistent with these objectives of competition policy.”  The same argument might be applied to other laws in China, such as Section 329 of the contract law, which deals with monopolization of technology.   In fact, China has a long history of industrial policy regulation of competition, much of which was enacted prior to China’s antimonopoly law.

Neither set of comments fully addresses a core concern of the proponents of this draft,  “that the administrative law enforcement is dispersed, that law enforcement standard is not unified, that the legal responsibility system is not perfect, and that the punishment is too lenient.”  Prior experience of administrative trade secret enforcement of the AUCL has shown that foreigners have not been a significant beneficiary, despite high level political attention paid to increased trade secret protection.   In the trademark context, SAIC’s foreign-related docket is several multiples of all foreign-related civil IP cases.  Increased administrative enforcement authorities raise several complicated concerns:  will these authorities be used fairly on behalf of Chinese and foreigners alike,  will trade secrets be protected by administrative agencies, are the courts better situated to adjudicate the various divergent issues,  what priority will AUCL enforcement assume in SAIC’s vast bureaucracy,  how will these expanded authorities be coordinated with criminal law enforcement and the courts, etc.

Update of March 16, 2017:  Attached are the  Comments of the American Intellectual Property Law Association.