New administrative regulation for patent application

The State Intellectual Property Office of PRC (SIPO) issued a administrative regulation on 27 Aug which will become effective on 1 Oct 2007. As of today, I cannot find the English version on the official web. This is the highlight, with the original numbering:

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2. Applicant or Patent Agent should not involved in abnormal patent application;

3. Abnormal patent application includes:
3.1 Same person or legal entity has submitted multiple patent applications with similar contents; or caused to submit multiple patent applications with similar contents.
3.2 Same person or legal entity has submitted multiple patent applications that copy prior arts; or cause to submit multiple patent applications that copy prior arts.
3.2 Patent agent that submit patent applications as described in 3.1 and 3.2.

4. SIPO may take action against abnormal patent application according to patent law and regulations, and may take additional action....
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The Chinese version of this can be found here.

So what happen to incremental improvement to existing technology? On the good side, it protect existing technology, but on the other hand, it discourage small but useful invention. This may be working in line with the recent patent changes in US. However, the new regulation may have a damaging effect on the raise of annual growth of patent application in China, currently running at a rate of 20%+ per year. But like other regulation in China, we cannot only read the words, we really need to wait and see how SIPO exercise the right of this regulation.

Service for inventors in China

Hi, after so many months, I am back. I was planning for expansion of our service offering, so we dont want to limit ourself to handle patent applications in China, Hong Kong, United States and Europe. Let's talk about that later.

While we are brain storming and soul searching, we looked at what type of services are being offered for inventors in China and found something interesting. Here is the first one, with the web site called patent-cn.com, this is a site that post descriptions and most likely pictures, so in case you dont read Chinese, you can still enjoy some good looking pictures.

You may wonder that good looking pictures may not be able to reflect a new technology break through. Yes, that is right, as you may know more than 80% of patent applied in China are design patent, so a picture or two will give you good description of the patent.

Is it a mouse (Micky Mouse), no, it is a cat!

Now it is a well publized news that a state run amusement park in Beijing has all sorts of characters not own by the park, like all Disney characters, Hello Kitty, Dora Amon, etc, running around in the park as an attraction. It was reported that the park was operating in this way for more than one year. The banner at the gate said, 'Disneyland is too far away, King Shan Park is close to you.' When confronted by a Japanese reporter, the park manager said that 'that is not Micky Mouse, as a matter of fact, it is a cat with big ears...' More could be seen at here.

This is not a new trick, about 2400 years ago in China, a senior offical wanted to know who were on his side, brought a deer in front of the king and said it was a good horse, some of the officals kept silence while the others said that it was a deer, not a horse. King did not know who to trust, eventually more and more said it was a horse. Then the testing offical knew who were his party members and used them to fool the King.

History is repeating 2400 years later. You think it is a mouse or a cat, check it out again!

Verdict is out - BT is illegal in Hong Kong

The verdict for the first BT case is out from the Court of Final Appeal, the Chan who used seeds to upload three copyright movies was found guilty and the three months sentence starts immediately. Chan went through the Magistrates Court, Appeal Court and the Court of Final Appeal is Chan's last chance for his case to be heart. It was reported that Chan admitted the act of uploading copyright material in the first caution statement after Customs and Excise Department raided his home. The later hearing was mostly related whether Chan's act was really an act to 'distribute' 'material' to the public.

Since the arrest, there is no other publicized arrest of the same nature in Hong Kong.

Visit China Import and Export trade fair

This session I am very busy with various business and personal matter, so have to do the visit on Sunday.

I visited the show because two of our clients asked us to do, to check out if there is any infringing products. I spotted one potential infringement and decided to purchase the product for further analysis. We will have our associated company in China to handle that later.

After doing what I have to do, I also want to see other types of goods, fishing if you like. I saw at least 5 counts of possible infringement, two are design patents, one utility patent. These can be good job to work for their IP owner. As I am not a lawyer in Hong Kong, I have more freedom to cold call custmers!

The Guangzhou Trade Fair

Each year in April and October, there are Guangzhou Trade Fair. It started in 1957 and was the only channel for export from China. Over the fifty years, the trade fair only allow export companies in China to show in the trade fair, and foreign buyers as visitor. Average Chinese citizens are not allowed to entered into the show. Starting this year, the 101st Guangzhou Trade Fair, oversea sellers are allowed to display their products for importing into China, so it becomes an import and export trade fair and rename itself as China Import and Export Fair. Because of the large number of products it carries, it has two separated sessions. The first session ended in 20 Apr and the second session is still in progress.

According to State Intellectual Property Office of PRC, there were 203 case of complaints for infringement of intellectual property in the first session, which represents a 15% decrease over last year. The official news (in Chinese) can be found here.

I have a customer who carries products displayed in second session, and I will go to Guangzhou to see the exhibition and check out if there are any infringing products. The second session ends on 30 Apr, next Monday. Then it will be the long holiday in China for the 1 May labour day.

Amendment of patent bill in Hong Kong

The Hong Kong Government is in the process to update the patent bill to implement a protocol adopted by the World Trade Organisation related to the issues related to import and payment of license fee for generic patented drugs, this is in particular addressing public health problems.

 

Speech by government officials on the subject can be found in a speech made on April 18.