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The National People’s Congress has announced the first reading of the proposed amendments to the Patent Law.
The draft amendments have raised the threshold for invention applications and placed harsher penalties for breach of piracy acts.
Shirley Kwok, partner at Bird & Bird, said that the amendments appear to be relatively soft in their approach and they “primarily codify a lot of well-accepted existing practices.”
Many of the controversial measures on parallel imports were removed. Under the draft, applicants can apply for foreign patents even before obtaining Chinese patents.
The draft also requires applicants of an invention to go through a secrecy examination before a foreign patent application can be filed, which Kwok says could deter multinational companies from investing in R&D in China.
As the draft amendment has not yet been approved by the People’s Congress, Kwok said it remains unclear just what the final amendments will be.
The amendments are expected to become law in early 2009, according to Paul Jones, barrister, solicitor and trade-mark agent at Jones & Co,
The public are invited to offer comments on the amendments through until October 10 2008.