Article 1. With the aim to promote the optimization and upgrading of industrial structure, to accelerate the implementation of intellectual property strategies of the state and the construction of an innovation-oriented country, and to improve patent examination procedure, Measures are formulated in accordance with the provisions of the Patent Law of the People's Republic of China and the Implementation Regulations of the Patent Law of the People's Republic of China.

Article 2. The Measures apply to the prioritized examination for the following patent applications or cases:

1) patent applications at the stage of substantive examination;

2) Utility model and design patent applications;

3) Reexamination of invention, utility model and design patent applications; and

4) Invalidation of invention, utility model and design patents.

Prioritized examinations based on bilateral or multilateral agreements signed by SIPO and patent examination offices of other countries or regions shall be conducted in accordance with the relevant regulations and are not subject to the Measures.

Article 3. Requests for prioritized examination can be made for patent applications and patent reexaminations constituting the following circumstances:

(1) relating to China’s key industries for development, such as energy conservation, environmental protection, new-era information technology, biotechnology, high-end equipment manufacturing, new energy, new materials, new energy vehicles and intelligent manufacturing;

(2) relating to the key industries encouraged and supported by the governments at provincial and municipal (with districts) levels;

(3) relating to internet, big data, and cloud computing, in which fields technologies and products are under rapid updating;

(4) those that are ready to be or are being implemented by the patent applicants or reexamination petitioners, or those that can be proved as being implemented by others;

(5) those that are first filed in China and then filed in other countries or regions with the same subject matters; and

(6) others that are of great significance to the national interest or public interest and require prioritized examination.

Article 4. Requests for prioritized examination can be made for invalidation cases where:

1) the parties concerned have requested local IP offices for enforcement, filed litigation before courts or arbitration applications before arbitration mediation organizations, for infringement disputes concerning the patent at issue,

2) the patents at issue are of great significance to the national interest or public.

Article 5. Requests for prioritized examination of patent applications and reexaminations shall be consented to by all applicants concerned. Applications for prioritized examination of invalidation cases shall be consented to by all petitioners or all patentees. 　　

Local IP offices, people’s courts or arbitration mediation organizations handling patent infringement dispute cases may request prioritized examination of invalidation case concerning the patent at dispute. 　　

Article 6. The amount of patent applications, patent reexamination and invalidation cases subject to prioritized examination shall be determined by SIPO according to the circumstances including examination capacity in various technical fields, the number of patents granted in the previous year, and the number of pending cases of the current year.

Article 7. The patent applications or patent reexamination cases requested for prioritized examination shall be submitted electronically.

Article 8. Where an applicant requests for prioritized examination on invention, utility model or design patent applications, he/she shall submit a written request for prioritized examination, as well as information materials and supporting documents concerning prior arts or prior designs; except for the condition prescribed in Item 5, Article 3 of these Measures, a request for prioritized examination shall be signed off with recommending opinions by a related department of the State Council or an intellectual property office at provincial level with opinions.

Where a party requests for prioritized examination of a patent reexamination application or an invalidation proceeding, he/she shall submit a written request and related supporting documents; except for patent reexaminations that had been treated with priority examination at the stage of substantive examination or preliminary examination, a request for prioritized examination shall be signed off with recommending opinions by a related department of the State Council or an intellectual property office at provincial level.

Where a local intellectual property office, a people 's court or an arbitration mediation organization requests for prioritized examination of an invalidation declaration case, it shall submit a written request and state the reasons.

Article 9. After receiving and reviewing a request for prioritized examination, SIPO shall promptly inform the requesting party of their opinion.

Article 10. Where SIPO approves to conduct a prioritized examination, the examination shall, from the date of approval, be concluded within the following timeframe:

1) For invention patent applications, the first office action issued within 45 days, and examination completed within 1 year;

2) For utility model or design patent application, examination completed within 2 months;

3)For patent reexamination applications, examination completed within 7 months;

4)For invalidation of invention or utility model patents, examination completed within 5 months; for invalidation of design patents, examination completed within 4 months.

Article 11. For a patent application under prioritized examination, the applicant shall make reply or amendment as soon as possible. The time limit for replying to an office action concerning an invention patent is 2 months from the date of issuance of the notice, and for replying to an office action concerning a utility model application or a design patent application is 15 days from the date of issuance of the notice.

Article 12. For a patent application under prioritized examination, SIPO may cease the prioritized examination procedure and resume ordinary procedure and notify the party requesting prioritized examination in a timely manner under any one of the following circumstances:

1) where the applicant makes amendment to the application in accordance with Item 1 or 2, Article 51 of the Implementation Regulations of the Patent Law, after the request for prioritized examination is approved;

2) where the applicant makes reply after the time limit prescribed in Article 11 of these Measures;

3) where the applicant has submitted fraudulent materials;

4) where the application is found to be an abnormal patent application during examination.

Article 13. For a reexamination or invalidation proceeding under prioritized examination, the Patent Reexamination Board may cease the prioritized examination procedure and resume ordinary procedure and notify the party requesting prioritized examination in a timely manner under any one of the following circumstances:

1) where the reexamination applicant requests extension for reply;

2) where the invalidation petitioner supplements evidences and grounds after the request for prioritized examination is approved;

3) where the patentee modifies the claims by ways other than deletion, after the request for prioritized examination is approved;

4) where the patent reexamination or invalidation proceeding is suspended;

5) where the examination of the case relies on the conclusion of other cases;

6) where, for a complicated case, approval to cease prioritized examination is given by Patent Reexamination Board Director.

Article 14. SIPO is responsible for the interpretation of these Measures.

Article 15. These Measures shall enter into force as of August 1, 2017. The “Administrative Measures for Prioritized Examination of Invention Patent Applications” effective since August 1, 2012 is abolished at the same time.

July 20, 2017, the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) held a press conference to introduce the major statistics over the first half of 2017.

In the first half of 2017, China's invention patent applications totaled 565,000, up 6.1%. A total of 209,000 invention patents were granted, of which 160,000 are by domestic applicants. As of the end of June 2017, China had a total of 1,227,000 domestic (excluding Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan) inventions.

Over the same period, a total of 21,600 PCT international patent applications were filed, up 16%. Among them, 20,000 are from domestic, up15.3% and 1,600 are from abroad, up 26.0%. Of all the domestic applications, Guangdong ranks first with 11,900 applications, Beijing, Jiangsu, Shanghai, Shandong, Zhejiang all have more than 500 applications; these six provinces and cities take up nearly 90% of the domestic PCT patent application volume.

Meanwhile, there were 15,865 reexamination cases accepted, 8,504 concluded; 2,064 invalidation cases accepted, and 2,007 concluded.

During this period, SIPO received a total of 1,205 integrated circuit layout design applications, and granted 1,119.

Also in this period, the whole country’s patent administrative enforcement organizations handled a total of 15,411 cases, up 23.3%, among which there were 8,837 patent dispute cases (including 8,666 cases of patent infringement), up 26.3% and 6,574 counterfeiting patent cases, up 19.5%.

Recently the Ministry of Commerce has released statistics of China imports and exports in the first half of 2017.

It’s reported that China has achieved double-digit growth in service imports and exports in the first half of 2017, with a total import and export volume of 2287.14 billion yuan, up 12.9%. Among them, exports hit 695.09 billion yuan, up 5.6%; imports 1592.05 billion yuan, 16.5%, with 899.66-billion-yuan deficit.

It’s noteworthy that IP service exports amounted to 14.94 billion yuan, up 458.4%, which continues the rapid growth since this year.

To facilitate applicants to submit PPH (patent prosecution highway) request, all PPH offices joined SIPO’s proposal and completed the “unified PPH request form” project, which had come up with a unified PPH request form template that serves as reference for all offices.

As of June 30, 2017, the unified template has been adopted by 19 PPH participating IP offices including China, European Community, Sweden, Finland, Austria, Israel, Hungary, Spain, Portugal, Norway, Australia, USA, Russia, Canada, Denmark, UK, Korea, Japan and Egypt.

At this point, the PPH request forms submitted by applicants to the PPH participating offices of the above countries or regions, although in different language versions, have similar layout and items, thus facilitating the submission of application and materials preparation for the applicants.

Recently, Jian Wang 2017, an anti-piracy campaign, was officially launched by the National Copyright Administration, National Internet Information Office, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, as well as Ministry of Public Security of P. R. China.

This year Jiang Wang action will focus on the Internet copyright protection for news and TV/movies industries, as well as the crackdown on copyright violation in E-Commerce platform and mobile Internet application (APP) areas. Surrounding the purpose of restoring the copyright order of TV/movies and news works on the Internet, acts of disseminating infringement or piracy works through websites, mobile client terminals and “self-media” will be severely punished.

This action started from July 2017 and shall last for about four months with the following three major tasks carried out:

1. For key copyrighted works: to crack down on the infringement or piracy acts of disseminating unauthorized TV/movies and news via websites, through network drive, consolidated links, applications, Weibo & WeChat, Forums and other channels, as well as unauthorized reposting of news on websites, mobile client terminals, WeChat public profiles and other self-media, and all sorts of news information consolidation platform.

2. For copyright issues in APP market, to crack down on the infringement and piracy acts conducted by APP stores and vendors who publish and disseminate unauthorized news, literature, TV/movies, animation and music works, and to attack APP infringement and piracy acts related to consolidation APP, Internet TV stick and TV box.

3. For copyright administration on E-Commerce platforms, especially large-scale E-commerce platforms, to crack down on the online stores selling infringing or piracy books, audios and videos, digital publications, network drive passwords and piracy links.

July 13, the EU Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) issued a report entitled "Protecting Innovation Through Trade Secrets and Patents: Determinants for EU Companies’ Success". The study found that in most EU member states, trade secrets are getting more popular than patents, especially for large companies. vThe survey showed that 52.3% of the surveyed companies use trade secrets, only 31.7% of companies use patents. Among large companies, 69.1% use trade secrets, 52.8% use patents. Among small and medium enterprises, 51.2% use trade secrets, 30.4% use patents. The most important figure is that trade secrets are particularly popular in Finland, with 78.1% of companies using trade secrets, and only 33.2% of companies owning patents. Trade secrets are also popular in Germany, with 74.1% of companies using trade secrets and 47.8% of companies using patents.

The survey also found that trade secrets are more likely to be applied to method innovation and service innovation. If an innovation involves a tangible product rather than a service, patent is more likely to be applied.

Focusing on companies’ preference for patent or trade secret and the factors that influence the choice of protection strategies, this study emphasizes the complementary effects of these two methods of protection. The study also aims to provide policy makers with basic guidance to further develop the trade secret framework.

In 2016, the Trade Secrets Directive, which was designed to standardize trade secrets, was implemented.

Qu Mei Furniture Group Co. Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “QM Group”) applied for registration of trademark in respect of furniture and the accessories on Feb 18, 2014. The application was rejected by the Trademark Office on the ground that the mark consists of only two English letters in plain form which is devoid of distinctive characteristics.

QM Group applied for review but Trademark Review and Adjudication Board sustained the refusal decision. In disagreement, QM Group initiated an administrative litigation with Beijing IP Court.

QM Group pleaded that the mark possesses distinctive characteristics and does not fall within the circumstances prescribed in Article 11-1-(3); in addition, the mark has gained remarkable publicity after long term use and propaganda, which has further increased its distinctiveness, and therefore the mark should be approved for registration in accordance with Article 11-2 of the Trademark Law. In support of the argument, QM Group submitted evidences including pictures of stores, furniture, and accessory products where mark is used, as well as advertisements and official websites showing the use of mark.

Beijing IP Court held that, despite the plaintiff’s claim of the special design, the mark has minimal difference from a standard form of the composing letters, and therefore possesses low degree of distinctiveness. However, the evidences have shown that the mark corresponds to the Chinese 曲美 (pinyin as “Qu Mei”), and the two of them are often used together in stores, advertisements and official websites; also the evidences prove that the mark has been used substantially and marketed extensively. Besides, the composed mark composed of and 曲美 has been recognized as a well-known mark. With the unique corresponding relationship with QM Group and the Chinese曲美, the mark has been recognized by consumers and has been able to play the function of identifying the source of goods. Accordingly, the court revoked the refusal decision in accordance with Article 11-2.

Typical Significance

This is a typical case of trademark overcoming inherent lack of distinctiveness and obtained registration based on “acquired distinctiveness”. In accordance with Articles 5 & 6 of the Supreme Court’s Opinions on Issues Concerning the Trial of Administrative Cases Involving the Granting and Determination of Trademark Rights, “the courts shall determine the distinctive characteristics of a trademark in whole and based on the common sense of the relevant public”, and “shall determine the distinctive characteristics of a trademark in a foreign language based on the common sense of the relevant public in China”. In other words, the inherent distinctiveness of a mark is only one of the factors for deciding its registrability; how the mark is used by the trademark applicant shall be considered as an important factor too. Therefore, for marks rejected because of “lack of distinctive characteristics”, the trademark applicants can still seek registration by proving the mark has acquired distinctive characteristics through uses with sufficient evidences submitted.

July 19, legal representative of Shanghai Oriental Glasses Co. Ltd. visited Unitalen with a pennant for recognizing the firm’s hard work in protecting the time-honored business name “Oriental Glasses”.

Due to historical reason, many long-established businesses in China encountered challenges and obstacles in protecting their brand names. Same for Shanghai Oriental Glasses Co. Ltd., they took a 12-year fight to secure the protection of their time-honored business name “Oriental Glasses” with the help of Unitalen.

August 3, teachers and students of Dalian University of Science and Technology (DUST) summer program visited Unitalen.

Since Unitalen set up Unitalen scholarship at DUST in 2015, dozens of outstanding students have received awards and foreign study funds to pursue studying abroad. And every year, students awarded with the scholarship visit Unitalen during summer program

For years, Unitalen has taken on the social responsibility of cultivating IP talents. In addition to sending the firm’s own outstanding attorneys and lawyers to study abroad, Unitalen partners with many prestige universities, such as Tsinghua University, Tongji University, Zhejiang University of Technology, to cultivate IP talents. “Unitalen Class” has been set up with many educational institutes, and “Unitalen scholarship” helps to open the door of IP career to more students.