New Year, New Chinese Intellectual Property System

Sherrie Holdman, MJLST Staffer 

Since the beginning of the new year, China has implemented various new Intellectual Property (“IP”) changes. Three major changes are particularly critical for promoting an enhanced IP system in China.

The first change is the establishment of a new IP appellate court. On October 26, 2018, China’s National People’s Congress (NPC) Standing Committee issued the Decision on Several Issues Concerning the Litigation Procedures in Patent and Other Intellectual Property Cases. On December 3, 2018, in a plenary session of the Judicial Committee of the Supreme Court chaired by Chief Justice Zhou Qiang, the Committee passed the Supreme Court Guidance Re Intellectual Property Tribunal. The official IP court was finally launched in January 2019. The new body is expected to hear appeals from both civil and administrative matters. According to Chief Justice Zhou Qiang, handing civil and administrative patent appeals to the new IP court will help unify adjudications related to patent validity and infringement, improve the efficiency and quality of court proceedings, and thus improve judicial protection of IP rights. The protection of IP rights has been a key issue of the trade war between the United States and China. China has been criticized for its lax IP protection for many years. The new IP court seems to come as a trade negotiation of the two countries.

Another change is China’s new policy on IP enforcement. On December 4, 2018, the National Development and Reform Commission, along with 37 government departments, released a Chinese interagency Cooperation Memorandum of Understanding. The goal of the Memorandum was to punish entities who seriously violate the patent law, including acts such as repeated patent infringement, non-compliance with the patent law, and serious illegal patent agency conduct. Like the new IP court, this policy seems to be another negotiation between the United States and China. Indeed, the policy was released days after the meeting of United States President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping at a summit in Argentina. The policy took a further step to enhance the IP protection in China.

The third change is the Fourth Amendment of the Chinese Patent Law. On December 5, 2018, the latest Draft of the Chinese Patent Law was presented to China’s State Council in a meeting chaired by Premier Li Keqiang. The new Amendment aimed to strengthen the protection of patent rights holder’s legitimate rights and interests, stimulate innovations, and promulgate legislations to effectively protect patent rights. Specifically, the Draft aimed to increase the penalties for IP infringement, to increase the amount of compensation and fines for willful infringement and counterfeiting patents, and thus increase the infringement cost in order to deter illegal acts. Particularly, the Draft proposed to raise the minimum fine to 100,000 RMB and the maximum fine to 5 million RMB. The Draft also stated that an infringer shall be cooperative in an infringement lawsuit. The Draft further set forth that network service providers shall bear joint liability for not stopping infringement in a timely manner. The Draft provided an incentive mechanism for employee inventors so that they could equitably share profits from inventions invented by the employees in the course of their employment.. Further, the Draft introduced a patent term extension system for innovative drugs, strengthened public information systems, and proposed to make basic patent data available in the China National Intellectual Property Administration (“CNIPA”) website. In order to foster patent dissemination and utilization, the Draft provided national and local authorities to increase public patent services and introduced an open patent license system. In addition, the Draft introduced a domestic priority of six months for design applications, extended patent term for design patents to fifteen years, and extended the time period for priority document submission for patents/utility models applications. The Draft Amendments were released for public comment from January 4, 2019 to February 3, 2019. The final rule is expected to come out soon this year.

It remains to be seen how these changes would improve China’s IP system. Nevertheless, the impact of these changes should not be underestimated. China is known as a big market for technology and business. However, foreign investors have been hesitate to invest in China due to China’s lax patent protection. With these changes aiming to establish an enhanced IP system, China is expected to build a friendly commercial environment to foreign inventors and investors, continue to improve domestic innovations, and encourage collaborations between foreign corporations with local companies. For instance, it has been said that these changes would attract global pharmaceuticals and tech companies to China because an enhanced IP system would enable foreign companies to uphold their IP in specialist courts, which is a great reassurance for foreign investors and inventors.