Competent authorities of China and UK have agreed to make arrangements on the bilateral intellectual property seminar announced when the two countries’ prime ministers met with each other this year. The ministerial officials would attend the seminar and would launch an informal IP dialogue to strengthen the understanding of each other’s IP policy, with an aim to formulate feasible measures to improve IP environment so as to promote mutual trade and investment.

Lu Peijun said that China would continue to strengthen the enforcement cooperation with relevant departments home and abroad, further enhance the long-term-effect mechanism of the customs’ IP protection, and resolutely fight against all kinds of infringements.

Zhang Jinhui, the Director of Intellectual Property Department of Hong Kong, stated on October 8 that the purpose of the amendment is to strengthen the regulations against Internet infringement. The consideration as to whether derivative work, dubbed by netizen as “KUSO” (literally faeces in Japanese) , would constitute an infringement depends on the individual circumstances, but factors such as the degree of copying, distribution purposes, economic loss to the copyright holder, and whether the copying is for profit would be taken into account.

In addition, the Hong Kong government proposed the establishment of an "original patent" system, under which Hong Kong could examine and allow patent applications without requiring inventors to first obtain foreign patents. The new system is expected to help save application time and cost. Zhang added that the system would be suitable for scientific research organizations and small businesses.

However, due to the extensive fields of invention, it will take time to train professional examiners and set up a patent database. Further, due to the territorial characteristics of patent protection, an "original patent" would only cover Hong Kong but not the mainland as they would each maintain an independent patent system.

The agreement will reportedly be put into effect in November, 2011, after it was signed in Beijing on October 18, 2011. In the past, the prosecution time of a patent application filed by Japanese applicants in China would take up to 2 to 3 years. Under the Patent Prosecution Highway, the prosecution time would reduce to just half a year, which would be advantageous for Japanese applicants who wish to establish their predominance in the Chinese market.

It was the first time China signed this kind of agreement with a foreign intellectual property office. However, it was Japan’s 17th agreement with a foreign intellectual property office, subsequent to its agreement with the European Patent Office (EPO) and United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

According to the agreement, if the government of one country allows a patent application filed by a Chinese or Japanese applicant, the government of the other country will just have to record the prosecution history documentation of the allowed patent application. This greatly simplifies the patent examination procedures as compared with the past practice of independent examination by the two governments.

According to the requirements of the PCT and its detailed implementation rules, the search and examination of a PCT international patent application necessitates a minimum collection of patent documents and non-patent literature, i.e. the PCT minimum documentation requirement. At present, the patent documents refer to patent documents that have been officially published by the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland, Japan, Russia (including the former Soviet Union), European Patent Office and Patent Cooperation Treaty Organization since 1920. On the other hand, the list of non-patent literature, which is subject to change, is published by the International Bureau and usually includes more than 100 scientific and technical journals of the above seven countries and two organizations.

The addition of Chinese patent documents into the PCT minimum documentation signifies a new phase in Chinese patent documentation, and beneficially enables patent examiners of the respective countries to search a more complete collection of prior art documents. This improves the efficiency and quality of PCT searches, and also enhances the contribution of Chinese patent documents to the rest of the world.

In recent years, there has been a sustained and rapid growth in Chinese patent applications, and a significant increase in the number Chinese patent documents. As of the end of August, 2011, there were 6.65 million of Chinese patent documents relating to three kinds of patents (inventions, utility models and designs), and this number is expected to increase by hundreds of thousands each year.