On October 31 , 2022 , the China National Intellectual Property Administration issued the "Draft Amendment to the Guidelines for Patent Examination (Draft for Comments)", and at the same time solicited comments again on the draft amendment. A total of three comments have been solicited for the revision of the Guidelines for Patent Examination in this round, and two notices for comments were issued on November 10 , 2020 and August 3, 2021, respectively. This is the third time for comments . For units or persons who have comments or suggestions on this revision, they can submit comments before December 15 , 2022 .

The revised draft of the Guidelines for Patent Examination (Draft for Comments) involves specific provisions for incorporation by reference, modification or correction of priority, diagnosis of diseases and judgment of treatment methods, the examination of apparent creative in the process of the preliminary examination of utility models, the form of oral hearing in invalidation, the limitation of citizen agency, the limitation of claim amendment in invalidation, the newly added inadmissibility, some specific provisions on international design applications, etc.

The substantive amendments to the patent invalidation procedure are described below:

(1) Regarding citizen agency. In the previous invalidation proceedings, lawyers (non-patent attorneys) of law firms could attend oral hearings as citizen representatives. According to the revised examination guidelines, simple lawyers will not be able to attend oral hearings. Lawyers with patent agency licenses may attend oral proceedings as patent attorneys. In addition, the company's employees can attend oral hearings with social security records and salary certificates.

(2) Patent ownership disputes and invalid examination. According to previous invalidation trials, when the patent involved in the case involved a patent ownership dispute, one party would often request to suspend the invalidation trial accordingly. After this revision, if the parties request to suspend the trial, the invalidation examination procedure may not be suspended, and the parties to the dispute over ownership may request to participate in the invalidation procedure. The parties to the dispute over ownership may highlight their opinions for the collegial panel to refer to in the invalidation review. The revision of this content may be aimed at the fact that in the previous invalidation examination procedure, one party "generated" some disputes over the ownership of patent rights that may not exist in order to delay the invalidation examination, which led to the phenomenon that the invalidation trial period was too long.

(3) Restrictions on the way of patent modification. In the invalidation procedure, the amendment of the claim further clarifies that the amendment of the claim shall be amended for the reasons for invalidation or the defects pointed out by the collegial panel. According to this provision, if the amendment has nothing to do with the reason for invalidation, and the collegial panel does not point out the corresponding defects, even if the way of amending the independent claims is further limited, other amendments may not be considered and accepted by the collegial panel.

(4) Special provisions on review of invalidation request cases involving the early resolution mechanism for drug patent disputes. This part of the content is aimed at the early resolution mechanism of disputes involving pharmaceutical patents, and is a new content modified according to the law.

(5) Presiding and conducting oral hearings. In the previous regulations, all members of the collegial panel in the oral trial should attend the oral trial, and it is clear that the leader of the collegial panel presides over them. But in practice, it often happens that the chief judge presides over it. In this revised plan, the chief judge can preside over the investigation of the trial. Moreover, in the future, the presiding judge may conduct an oral hearing alone.

The above are the amendments involving invalidation of the patent. For specific revision comparisons and other revisions, please refer to the attachment.

For units and persons who wish to make comments on the modification, they can submit comments and suggestions before December 15 , 2022 through the following contact information .

1. Email: tiaofasi@cnipa.gov.cn
2. Fax: 010-62083681
3. Letter: Examination Policy Division, State Intellectual Property Office, No. 6, Xitucheng Road, Haidian District, Beijing, 100088 (please indicate "Guidelines for Patent Examination" in the lower left corner of the envelope)