Amendments to Guidelines for Patent Examination regarding on Utility Model / Design Patent Application

Effective from October 15, 2013, the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) of China has applied new regulations (Decree No. 67) in connection with the examination on utility model/design patent application.

Pursuant to the new regulations, during preliminary examination, examiners will examine whether the patent application for utility model obviously lacks novelty.  Examiners may, depending on the obtained information of prior art and conflict applications, examine whether the patent application for utility model obviously does not possess novelty.

Similar principle applied to the examination for design patent application as well. Pursuant to the new regulations, during the preliminary examination, examiners conduct examination with respect to whether the patent application for design is obviously not in conformity with the provisions of Article 23.1 of the Patent Law (novelty).  Examiners may, depending on the obtained information of prior art or conflicting applications, examine whether or not the patent application for design is obviously not in conformity with the provisions of Article 23.1 of the Patent Law.

For more information, you may refer to our brief in the Article section.