General IP News

Chief Judge Pallmeyer issued her seventh amended COVID General Order earlier today, October 29, 2020. As with the last order, there are no additional blanket case extensions. The General Order basically extends provisions limiting courthouse access to what is necessary. But it also suspends jury trials — both civil and ... Read More

The Supreme People’s Court issued the its draft patent linkage Judicial Interpretation, the “Provisions on Several Issues Concerning the Application of Law in the Trial of Civil Cases Involving Drug Marketing Review and Approval of Patent" (Draft for Solicitation of Comments)” The deadline for submission of comments on the JI ... Read More

The Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO)  has submitted bilingual comments to SAMR on the draft Trade Secret Rules 《商业秘密保护规定（征求意见稿) 》.   The comments are found here and at the IPO website   I blogged about these rules previously here.  IPO’s substantive trade secret comments on a range of issues governed by both ... Read More

Judicial involvement in this legislation is needed to harmonize the legal complexities of patent linkage which complex issues of patent law, civil law, administrative law, and pharmaceutical regulation. ... Read More

I will be talking at a Federalist Society sponsored live podcast this Thursday October 22, 2020 at noon EDT on “The United States-China Relationship and Intellectual Property”. My fellow speakers are two retired Chief Judges of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit: Paul Michel and Randall Rader.  Brian ... Read More

According to Chinese press reports, the National People’s Congress Standing Committee decided to approve the revised patent law on October 17, 2020. The Legal Daily notes that among the key provisions that are incorporated into the new law are an increase in statutory damages, patent term restoration and early resolution ... Read More

As previously discussed, SAMR released a draft trade secret protection rule for public comments on September 4 (the “Rule”).  Comments are due October 18, 2020.  I have attached here a draft translation of the Rule.  The Rule supersedes prior SAIC rules on trade secrets enacted in 1995 and amended in ... Read More

The Asia Society of Northern California has made the video available of my October 8 speech on “Fact or Fiction in the US-China IP Trade War” available here.  You can also read the pdf of the written speech. The video includes comments from the panel and the audience, which were ... Read More

What are the impacts of Trump administration punitive tariffs, export control sanctions, and foreign investment restrictions against China on the underlying technologies for these products and on their extended supply chains?  Has the Trump administration achieved success in reshoring manufacturing back to the United States or are manufacturing and related ... Read More

The Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) recently posted a position vacancy for a Director International Affairs, Asia. Recommended background: knowledge of an Asian language, 5-10 years relevant experience (including government relations), experience in China, knowledge of US trade policy, and a legal, science or social science background. ... Read More

The Asia Society of Northern California is sponsoring a free webinar October 8 from 5-6:30 PM PST on “Fact and Fiction in the US-China IP Trade War” as part of its “Seek Truth from Facts” series on US-China relations.  The registration link is here. I will be joined by some ... Read More

The Beijing IP Court has recently released a Report on patent linkage, which highlights the legal challenges that the courts may face in implementing the proposed linkage regime, entitled  “Research on the China Pharmaceutical Patent Linkage System” (中国药品专利链接制度研究) (the “Report”) (China Trial magazine (中国审判).  The Report references the various developments in ... Read More

The Gen Law Firm (己任律师事务所) has graciously provided us with translations of two recently released judicial interpretations with red-lining to compare with the prior public comment drafts.  The civil trade secret judicial interpretation was released on September 11, 2020.  I blogged about it here.   On September 13, a criminal IP ... Read More

ABC Corp. I v. Partnership & Unincorporated Assocs. Identified on Sched. A, No. 1:20 cv 4806, Slip Op. (N.D. Ill. Sept. 4, 2020) (Seeger, J.). Having previously issued a show cause order, Judge Seeger granted plaintiff leave to file an amended complaint in this patent dispute naming the plaintiff, or ... Read More

On September 12, 2020, the Supreme People’s Court issued its new “Guiding Opinion on the Trial of Civil Cases of Intellectual Property Rights Involving E-Commerce Platforms”  关于审理涉电子商务平台知识产权民事案件的指导意见 (the “Guiding Opinion”). This Guiding Opinion explicitly references China’s E-Commerce law.  A translation is available here. I previously discussed the drafting of that ... Read More

On September 11, 2020,the SPC released its trade secret JI on civil enforcement of trade secrets.  Here is a link to a Chinese text comparing the final version with the draft released for public comment.  The USPTO unofficial translation of the prior draft is available here. While we wait for ... Read More

On September 4, 2020, the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) released Draft Trade Secret Protection Rules for public comment  [商业秘密保护规定（征求意见稿）] including an accompanying explanation. Comments are due by October 18, 2020.  SAMR announced its intention to draft these rules in its 2020 legislative work plan.   As with the earlier ... Read More

China’s National Medical Products Administration on September 11, 2020, in conjunction with the China National IP Administration  released the draft “Implementation Measures for the Early Resolution Mechanism for Drug Patent Disputes (Trial) (Draft for Comment)” (the “Draft Measures”) for public comment (  国家药监局综合司 国家知识产权局办公室公开征求《药品专利纠纷早期解决机制实施办法（试行）（征求意见稿）》意见).  The announcement includes the text of ... Read More

On September 15, 2020, USPTO is sponsoring a free webinar on “Safeguarding Trade Secrets in China’s China’s Changing IP Landscape” from 9:00-11:00 AM  EST.  Information is available here.  Speakers include Jerry Xia, whose analysis of recent trade secret cases was reported here, as well as Ran Ruixue (Covington), Mike Diehl ... Read More

Chief Judge Pallmeyer opted for an abbreviated format for her sixth amended COVID General Order issued, Friday, September 4. That is presumably because the order is simpler than it was at the outset of the pandemic. There are no blanket case extension. The General Order basically extends provisions limiting courthouse ... Read More

President Trump has now issued three Executive Orders (EOs) prohibiting  WeChat and TikTok from transacting business in the United States.  The first two EOs were issued on August 6 pursuant to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), the National Emergencies Act (NEA) and  3 USC Sec. 301.  The statutory ... Read More

The UIC John Marshall Law School’s Center for Intellectual Property, Information & Privacy is hosting a virtual seminar along with the Institute for Intellectual Property & Social Justice on Friday, September 11, 2020 from 7:40am – 3:00pm CT focused on IP issues in the midst of the pandemic. The speaker ... Read More

One of the purported reasons for closing the consulate were Vienna Convention violations/IP theft. According to various press reports, the spokesperson for the State Department, Morgan Ortagus, stated that “We have directed the closure of PRC Consulate General Houston in order to protect American intellectual property and American’s [sic] private information.” ... Read More

The Webinars: There several useful webinars that are scheduled for this month.  On July 23, 2020 the USPTO will be hosting a webinar on using overlapping rights to protect your products (10:30 AM-12:30 EST).  China has many efficient and low cost means for protecting design and other rights, including design ... Read More

Amendments to the Criminal Law regarding trade secret theft have been announced by the NPC.   A new provision is proposed to be added to the end of  Article 219 of the Criminal Law: “Whoever steals, spies, buys, or illegally provides commercial secrets to overseas institutions, organizations, and personnel shall be ... Read More

Several useful empirical reports on China’s IP environment have been released in the past few weeks.  I summarize four of them: Trademark Litigation Jerry Xia and his colleagues at the Anjie firm have written ”Trademark litigation Forum Shopping in China – What the Data Tells Us” (the “Trademark Report”) (July ... Read More

Thanks to He Jing of the Anjie Law Firm, attached please find an unofficial line-by-line translation of the recently released Patent Law Amendments 2nd reading.   Comments are due August 16, 2020. Some highlights of this draft: Partial Design Protection Article 2 adds language back-in to allow partial design protection.  This is ... Read More

When applying for a patent application, certain entities are entitled to reduced USPTO filing fees. Applicants who qualify for small entity status can reduce many USPTO fees by 50%. Applicants who are micro entities can reduce certain fees by 75%. An applicant who is neither a small entity nor a ... Read More

According to the NPC Observer and other sources, the NPC Standing Committee is now seeking comments to the second review draft of the  Patent Law amendments专利法修正案草案二次审议稿.  The official NPC comments released with the draft are here.  A longer report on the status of the revisions of the Patent Law dated June ... Read More

Are you developing new technologies, treatments or other inventions that are useful to combat the COVID-19 epidemic? If so, my colleagues Gunjan Agarwal and Chipo Jolibois recently wrote a useful article discussing the Open COVID Pledge and how it can be used when patenting COVID-19-related inventions. For the full article ... Read More