Newsletter
PRC DESIGN PATENT EXAMI-NATION PRACTICE
When an application for a design patent includes a priority claim, China's State Intellectual Prop-erty Office (SIPO) will examine whether the de-sign in the Chinese application is "identical" with the one shown in the corresponding basic appli-cation. Accordingly, at the initial examination stage, examiners may make a substantive com-parison of the content of the priority documents and the application documents (specification and drawings). Because the subject matters qualified for design patent protection and the formality requirements for design specification an draw-ings could be different from those for Chinese design patent cases, some examiners, in the past, rejected priority claims on the grounds of "non-identical subject matters."
The SIPO recently amended its Patent Examina-tion Guidelines. Part I Chapter I Section 6.2.2.1 of the amended Guidelines provides that when making a specific comparison of the priority documents and the application documents at the initial examination stage, examiners should de-termine whether they are identical according to formality criteria. Unless the requirements of the Paris Convention are clearly not met, or the sub-ject matter is obviously unrelated, at the initial examination stage examiners should assume that a priority claim is valid.