To print this article, all you need is to be registered or login on Mondaq.com. On October 17, 2020, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress ("SCNPC") promulgated the Fourth Amendment to the China Patent Law ("CPL"), which will come into effect on June 1, 2021. It has been 12 years since the last amendment made in 2008 when China also formulated the Outline of the National Intellectual Property Strategy ("Outline"). With the implementation of the Outline, China has gradually grown into a big intellectual property ("IP") country characterized by the number of valid invention patents increased from 84000 in 2007 to 1.86 million in 2019, the total number of valid registered trademarks