According to the No. 349 Announcement of the National Intellectual Property Administration of P. R. China, for all patents issued on or after 3 March 2020, only electronic patent certificates will be issued. Patent certificate on paper could be requested separately if needed.
It is currently not sure whether official fees would be involved, which will be implemented in March, we will update afterwards.
It is also not sure how a Chinese court would handle this. According to the experience of registered trademark (which also turned fully electronic), the court accepts a printed copy of the electronic certificate.
As with paper patent certificate, if the patentee changes after the patent certificate is issued due to assignment, no new patent certificate will be issued. The same is expected to be applied to electronic patent certificate.
In any event, it is the Patent Register records that matter, which show the current patentee and whether the patent is in force, and have to be submitted to the court when filing an infringement complaint.
This case is a trademark infringement case with significant influence in the industry from 2019 to 2020.
The China National Intellectual Property Administration (“CNIPA”) announced the latest amendments to the Patent Examination Guidelines (hereinafter referred to as the “Guidelines”), part of which became effective as of November 1, 2019 and the rest as of February 1, 2020. This article aims to provide some practical advice on the highlights of the revisions.
As COVID-19 spreads over the world, at this difficult time, we are concerned about people affected by covid-19 worldwide.