IP News
The Trademark Review and Adjudication Board of China (TRAB) recently published a review of its own decisions made in 2015 and then subjected to judicial review.
DATE:2018-05-17 FROM:
The State Intellectual Property
Office of China just published a set of proposed amendments to its Patent
Examination Guideline for the public's comments, covering the following
important aspects:
(1)If a claim recites both features about a business method and technical
features, the examiner shall not reject the claim on the grounds that the claim
relates to "rules and methods for mental activities" under Article 25
of the PRC Patent Law.
(2)For inventions involving computer programs, it is allowable for a claim to
recite both hardware features and features defined as "(computer)
programs", and such programs features shall not be treated as
"functional features".
(3)Examiners should consider supplemental data submitted during examination if
the technical effect to be proven by the data can be derived by persons in the
art from disclosures of the subject application under examination.
(4)During an invalidation action, the patent owner can add to a claim one or
more features from other claims as granted. If the patent owner does such
an addition, the invalidity challenger should be given a chance to add new
grounds of invalidation toward the addition, but the challenger cannot cite new
evidence to support the added grounds and can only rely on evidence previously
submitted.
(5)For a pending invention patent application, the public can inspect and copy
office actions and search reports made by the examiner during the substantive
examination.
(6)When the People's Court issues a property preservation order to the Patent
Office to suspend and preserve the status of a patent or a pending application,
the Patent Office should follow the time limit set by the court's order.
If you have any inquires or comments on the above, please write to
info@lexfieldlaw.com.
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