Yanling Zhou of DEQI Intellectual Property presents a case study to depict how an applicant should seek to respond to an office action of an obvious substantive defect
Monday, March 15, 2021
On March 12, 2021, the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) released the “Measures Regarding the Regulation of Patent Applications” (关于规范申请专利行为的办法) effective immediately. CNIPA is continuing the transition from quantity to quality in patent applications and one method is to reject ‘abnormal’ or ‘irregular’ (junk) patent applications as defined in the Measures. These measures and the concurrent elimination of monetary incentives for patent filings should decrease the total amount of applications filed in China and specifically junk patents.
Article 2 defines the following behaviors as abnormal:
(1) Simultaneously or successively submitting multiple patent applications that are obviously the same in invention-creation content, or are essentially formed by simple combinations of different invention-creation features or elements;