In order to implement the important decisions and deployments related to the establishment of credit system in the field of intellectual property, such as the Intellectual Property Construction Outline (2021-2035) issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council and the 14th Five-Year Plan of National Intellectual Property Protection and Application issued by the State Council, and the State Council, further establish and improve the mechanism for credit management in the field of intellectual property, strengthen the credit supervision of behaviors like scramble for registering trademark and abnormal patent application in accordance with law, effectively strengthen the intellectual property protection, and promote the high quality development of intellectual property work, the Administration researched and drafted the Management Regulations for Intellectual Property Credit of National Intellectual Property Administration (for Trial)(hereinafter referred to as the Management Regulations (for Trial)). Now, the Management Regulations (for Trial) is open to public for advice. The relevant units and people from all walks of life can bring forward opinions for modification and improvement in the following ways by November 25, 2021:

Email: tixichu@cnipa.gov.cn

Fax: 010-62083171

Letter address: the Protection System Construction Office of the Protection Department of the National the National Intellectual Property Administration, No. 6, Xitucheng Road, Haidian District, Beijing, China, Post Code 100088 (please indicate“IP Credit Management Regulations”in the left bottom)

The National Intellectual Property Administration

19 November, 2021

 

The Management Regulations for Intellectual Property Credit of National Intellectual Property Administration (for Trial) (Draft for Comment)

 

Article 1 In order to implement the Intellectual Property Construction Outline (2021-2035) issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council, establish and improve the mechanism for credit management in the field of intellectual property, strengthen the intellectual property protection, and promote the high quality development of intellectual property work, in accordance with laws and administrative laws and regulations like the Patent Law of the People's Republic of China, the Trademark Law of the People's Republic of China, the Detailed Rules for the Implementation of the Patent Law of the People's Republic of China, the Regulation on the Implementation of the Trademark Law of the People's Republic of China, and the Regulation on Patent Agency, this Regulation is formulated. 

 

Article 2 This Regulation applies to all cases including dishonesty punishment, trust incentive, credit commitment, and credit evaluation when the National Intellectual Property Administration performs legal duties and provides public services. 

 

Article 3 The management of the intellectual property credit of the National Intellectual Property Administration shall adhere to the principles of  law-based administration, collaborative treatment, faults and punishments matching, and rights and interests protection, and focus on promoting the establishment of the long-term credit management mechanism. 

 

Article 4 The Intellectual Property Protection Department of the National Intellectual Property Administration is responsible for coordinating and promoting the credit management of the National Intellectual Property Administration, mainly including the following functions:

(1) Coordinating and promoting the construction of credit system  in the field of intellectual property and strengthening credit supervision in the field of intellectual property in accordance with laws and regulations;

(2) Coordinating and promoting the National Intellectual Property Administration’s work on identification of dishonesty, dishonesty punishment, trust incentive, credit commitments, credit evaluation, etc.;

(3) Undertaking the relevant work of the joint conference between departments about the construction of the social credit system and organizing the refinement and formulation of the specific items of public credit information in the field of intellectual property rights;

(4) Promoting the construction of credit information sharing platform in the field of intellectual property and collecting credit information of departments and units of the National Intellectual Property Administration.

 

Article 5 The departments and units undertaking the work related to patents, trademarks, geographical indication and proxy supervision and regulation shall perform the following duties:

(1) Generating and obtaining credit information in the process of performing duties and providing public services;

(2) Carrying out the identification of dishonesty in accordance with the law and reporting the dishonesty information;

(3) Performing regulation measures to the dishonesty entity in accordance with the law;

(4) Organizing the work of credit supervision and regulation, trust incentive, credit commitment, and credit evaluation, etc.

 

Article 6 The National Intellectual Property Administration shall identify the following acts as dishonesty in accordance with the law and regulation:

(1) The abnormal patent application behaviors determined in accordance with the Several Provisions on Regularizing Patent Application Behavior;

(2) Malicious trademark registration behaviors not for the purpose of use;

 

(3) Engaging in patent and trademark agency violating laws and regulations and is subject to administrative punishment of the National Intellectual Property Administration;

(4) Submitting false materials or concealing important facts to apply for administrative affirmation;

(5) Behaviors applied to the credit commitment that are identified as false commitment or failure to fulfill the commitment;

(6) Refused and escape to perform the administrative punishment and administrative adjudication that are in their abilities;

(7) Other behaviors that are listed in the specific items of public credit information in the field of intellectual property and should be identified as dishonesty.

 

Article 7 The departments and units undertaking the work related to patents, trademarks, geographical indication and proxy supervision and regulation identify the dishonesty behaviors based on the legally binding documents such as the administrative punishment, administrative adjudication, and administrative affirmation.

(1) In accordance with the abnormal patent application notice of dismissal, the abnormal patent application is identified as dishonesty;

(2) In accordance with the malicious trademark registration application notice of dismissal, the malicious trademark registration behaviors not for the purpose of use is identified as dishonesty;

(3) In accordance with the decision of administrative punishment, the engagement of illegal patent and trademark agency are identified as dishonesty; 

(4) In accordance with the administrative affirmation, submitting false materials or concealing important facts to apply for administrative affirmation in the process of product of geographical indication protection application, well-known trademark recognition application, trademark registration application and patent application are identified as dishonesty;

(5) In accordance with the administrative affirmation, behaviors applied to the credit commitment that are identified as false commitment or failure to fulfill the commitment in the process of patent agency examination, patent and trademark pledge registration, and patent cost reduction are identified as dishonesty;

(6) In accordance with the decision of the administrative adjudication and the decision of administrative punishment, behaviors with fulfillment but refusing to perform and escape the decisions are identified as dishonesty;

 

Article 8 The National Intellectual Property Administration implements the following management measures on the dishonesty entity:

(1) Application for financial funding projects is strictly examined and approved;

(2) Preferential policies and convenient measures such as patent cost reduction and priority review are strictly examined and approved;

(3) Being Disqualified from the appraisal of the National Intellectual Property Administration;

(4) Being Disqualified from declaring for paragon and superior enterprise of national intellectual property and from declaring, participating, and winning the award like China Patent Award;

(5) Being Listed as key supervision objects, improving the inspection frequencies and supervising and regulating strictly in accordance with the law;

(6) Not apply to credit commitment system;

(7) In accordance with laws and administrative laws and regulations and other management measures taken by the policy documents of the Party Central Committee and the State Council.

 

Article 9 Relevant departments and units fill in the dishonesty information summary table after the identification of the dishonest behavior with the confirmation of the dishonesty, and report to the Intellectual Property Protection Division within five working days.

 

After receiving and preliminarily reviewing the dishonesty information summary table submitted by the relevant departments and units, the Intellectual Property Protection Division report to the departments and units of the department, the Patent Office, and the Trademark Office in five working days. The government website of the Intellectual Property Office is publicized at the same time, and the departments and units have implemented the management measures for the dishonesty entity for a year. The period is calculated from the confirmation of the dishonesty, and is ended with the remove of the corresponding management measures and the stop of the publicity.

 

Where laws, administrative laws, and the policy documents of the Party Central Committee and the State Council set a longer deadline for implementing management measures, obey their provisions.

 

Article 10 Where the National Intellectual Property Administration has been implemented the management measures for the dishonesty less than a year and the dishonesty entity is again identified as dishonesty based on the Article 6 of this Regulation, the management and the publicity period of the dishonesty entity has been prolonged from the previous end of date, which is no more than three years for the longest.    

 

The dishonesty entity that is identified as dishonesty by many departments and units of the State Intellectual Property Administrative on the same day, the management and the publicity period is prolonged to no more than three years.

 

Article 11 The relevant departments and units should report the relevant information to the Intellectual Property Protection Division within three working days when the confirmation of dishonesty is revoked, confirmed illegal or invalid.

 

After receiving and preliminarily reviewing the relevant information, the Intellectual Property Protection Division report to the departments and units of the department, the Patent Office, and the Trademark Office in three working days, and stops publicizing at the same time. Departments and units remove the corresponding management measures. 

Article 12 The Intellectual Property Protection Division can send the dishonesty information to the intellectual property management departments of the provinces, autonomous regions, municipalities directly under the Central Government for reference.

 

Article 13 The State Intellectual Property Administration shall put the following dishonesty entities into the serious illegal and dishonesty list:

(1) Engaging in serious illegal patents and trademark agent behavior and being subject to severe administrative punishment;

(2)Refusing and escaping to perform the administrative punishment and administrative adjudication that are in their abilities and seriously affecting the credibility of the National Intellectual Property Administration after the administrative punishment and administrative adjudication are made.

The notifying, hearing, delivery, objection processing, credit repairing, and transfer of the severe illegal and dishonesty list are managed in accordance with the Management Measures for the Market Supervision and Management of Severe Illegal and Dishonesty List (No. 44 Order).

 

Article 14 The various departments and units of the National Intellectual Property Administration implement three-year management measures for the entity listed in the list of seriously illegal and dishonesty, and decontrol the management measures for the entities removed from the list in a timely manner.

 

Article 15 After receiving the seriously illegal and dishonesty information submitted by relevant departments, the Intellectual Property Protection Division publicizes the information on the website of the National Intellectual Property Administration and the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System at the same time in five working days. The publicizing period is consistent with the management period.

 

Article 16 The National Intellectual Property Administration shall share the information of the seriously illegal and dishonesty list with other relevant departments in accordance with the provisions, and implement joint punishment to the seriously illegal and dishonesty entities in accordance with the law, administrative laws and regulations, and the policy documents of the Party Central Committee and the State Council. 

 

Article 17 The various departments and units of the State Intellectual Property Administration could adopt incentive measures for entities with three consecutive years of trustworthiness, including:

(1) In the work of administrative examination and approval and project approve, convenient services like simplified handling and rapid processing are provided;

(2) In the work of using government special funds, the entities are listed as priority options under the equivalent condition;

(3) In the work of patent priority review, the entities are listed as priority options under the equivalent condition; guiding the local intellectual property protection center to prioritize in the patent pre-appraisal;

(4) Reduce the inspection frequency in daily inspections and special inspection.

 

Article 18 The National Intellectual Property Administration implements the credit commitment system in the work of trademark, patent pledge registration, patent cost reduction and patent agency practicing license, makes the format of the inform letter of commitment, and publicizes in the website of the National Intellectual Property Administration.

 

Article 19 The National Intellectual Property Administration promotes the formation of related industry credit evaluation systems and regulations, promotes credit evaluation, clear evaluation indicators, evaluation systems, and information collection specifications, and implements the hierarchical and classified management for credit entities in accordance with the requirement of the work.

 

Encouraging relevant departments and units, financial institutions, and third-party service agencies, and so on to actively use credit evaluation results in the field of intellectual property; encouraging market entities to actively apply credit evaluation results in intellectual property field in production and operation, qualification certificate, project declaration and other activities.

 

Article 20 The relevant departments and the staff of the State Intellectual Property Administration shall safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of the entities, keeping the national secrets, trade secrets or personal privacy that known in work secret. 

 

Article 21 Where the relevant departments and staff of the Credit Management Work of the State Intellectual Property Administration abuse power, negligence their duties, and malpractice, relevant responsibilities are investigated in accordance with the law.

 

Article 22 This Regulation shall be interpreted by the National Intellectual Property Administration. The intellectual property management departments of all provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities directly under the Central Government can formulate specific provisions based on local conditions.

 

Article 23 This Regulation shall be implemented from the date of publication. Where the relevant regulations previously announced by the State Intellectual Property Administration are inconsistent with this Regulation, this Regulation shall be applied.