Posts Tagged: "sipo"

The Top Trends in Patent Law for 2017

As we mark the close of yet another year, we’re provided with a perfect opportunity to look back on the previous twelve months and see what has transpired. No one could call it a good year for patent owners (except those with the largest pockets, of course) starting with the United States’ 10th-place ranking among national patent systems in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s IP Index, and it didn’t appear as though any weaknesses in uncertain patentability across the U.S. technological landscape were addressed in a positive manner this year. It’s inevitable that the ball will drop on New Year’s Eve and calendars everywhere will turn from 2017 to 2018. Whether the U.S. federal government will be able to stop the death knell sounding doom for our nation’s patent system, however, is still anyone’s guess and it seems far from likely.

As many in U.S. remain skeptical of patents, China picks up the slack

“Increasing numbers of US operating companies dislike patent protection,” Ding explained to IAM. “[T]he production and manufacture of products are increasingly located in Asia and Asian companies have more and more patents… opportunities are being transferred to the East just like manufacturing was.” * * * Although strong patent licensing activities are surely welcome news to Huawei and the many people employed by that firm, stakeholders in the U.S. patent system likely can’t help but see this as a further harbinger that China’s innovation economy will overtake ours in the coming years.

Challenges for Managing Chinese Patent Prosecution: Anything More Than Lost in Translation?

If you are an in-house counsel at a U.S. technology company, managing its global patent portfolio with a potentially significant exposure in China, you face some special challenges trying to effectively and efficiently manage the Chinese patent prosecution through your Chinese IP firms. You might assume that these challenges would be caused by some undefinable “Chinese” element. You already knew how to manage U.S. prosecution, performed by the outside U.S. law firms, and in theory you can apply that learned expertise to managing the process in China. But this is not U.S.-style patent prosecution in another place. The working language will be Chinese in addition to English, the communications will generally be over long distances, 12 to 15 time zones away, and you will have to deal with significant differences in laws, practices, and cultures. This article provides a roadmap and tips for making this process productive and successful.

World Intellectual Property Indicators 2016: Design Patent Highlights

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has published its annual World Intellectual Property Indicators. The 2016 report dissects the macro trends associated with filing activity and registrations for 2015 in the following intellectual property areas: patents, trademarks, industrial designs, and plant varieties… The twenty-year era of growth in industrial design patent applications came to an abrupt end in 2014, with a substantial drop in applications filed by 10.2%. In 2015, these figures are back on the rise, with a 2.3% increase. The number of designs in applications also rose in 2015, with non-resident applicant designs being the primary catalyst for growth. China was the main contributor to the number of designs per application, providing half the global total.

China streamlines patent examination for Internet, big data patent applications

On July 28th, 2017, China’s State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) announced a new set of regulations which are intended to streamline the examination of patent applications in certain burgeoning fields of technology. The new policy, which comes in response to “the central government’s call for an improved business environment, streamlined procedures for administrative approval, and the booming market,” will allow for the examination of both utility model and industrial design patent applications; SIPO guidelines issued as recently as five years ago only covered a single patent application designation, invention patents.