The proposed 4th amendment aims to strengthen the protection of patent rights, which is a good news to applicants.
However, instead of improving current patent enforcement related proceedings via judicial route, the current draft tends to achieve the above goal via administrative route by granting more power to the administrative organ (local patent bureau), which causes concerns from overseas clients, and judicial system oppositions.

Foreign applicants are very interested in how to claim priority when they want to file a Chinese design application. We will introduce some relevant issues about foreign priority.

China has overtaken America again. Its patent office received more applications than any other country’s in 2011. (The numbers were released in December.) But look closer, and the picture is murkier.

Business method application cannot be granted a patent right before the SIPO, unless you are very careful at the very beginning of drafting an application, fully understand the special tactics during prosecution of the application, and foresee the direction SIPO is heading regarding examination of a business method application.

The SIPO is coming up with the Draft of Service Invention Regulation aiming for protecting the right of a service inventor for claiming reward when the application is filed and remunerations when an application is patent granted and/or practiced from which the applicant obtains benefit.

The SIPO is proposing to amend relevant regulations in the Patent Examination Guideline to protect partial design/UI with design patent.