China set to introduce further protection for AI-related innovations
Xiaoming Zhang of Liu Shen & Associates takes a closer look at the Draft for Comments to the Patent Examination Guidelines and discusses its positive approach towards AI-related applications Sponsored by January 07 2021
On November 10 2020, the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) issued a revision to the Patent Examination Guidelines (Draft for Comments). The revision may enter into force alongside the revised Patent Law and the Implementing Regulations of the Patent Law on June 1 2021.
As discussed in a previous article, the Patent Examination Guidelines had been updated in February 2020, and aimed to address prominent issues in the artificial intelligence (AI) field including eligibility, novelty/inventiveness, and sufficient disclosure. It is generally uncommon for the CNIPA to release updates twice within a short period of t
Introduction
On 29 September 2020 the Ministry of Economic Affairs announced an amendment to Volume 3 – Design Patent Substantive Examination of the Patent Examination Guidelines. On 1 November 2020 the amended version of the guidelines took effect.
The amendment:
relaxes the requirement for the disclosure of specifications and drawings;
clearly stipulates that an architectural design and an interior design can be subject matter for a design patent;
relaxes the requirement relating to design divisional applications; and
amends the stipulation relating to graphical designs and others.
This article focuses on the relaxing of the requirement for the disclosure of specifications and drawings and design divisional applications and provides a comparison between the amended guidelines and the previous version.
Tuesday, December 15, 2020
On December 14, 2020, the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) released the Announcement of the CNIPA on Amending the Patent Examination Guidelines (No. 391) (国家知识产权局关于修改《专利审查指南》的公告（第391号)). This set of amendments focuses on pharmaceutical and biotech patent applications. The amended Guidelines go into effect on January 15, 2021.
A brief summary of the some of the amendments follow.
Supplementary Experimental Data
The Guidelines allow for the examination of supplementary experimental data after the filing date. “The technical effects proved by the supplementary experimental data should be obtained by those skilled in the art from the disclosure of the patent application.” CNIPA provides examples such as Example I: