International Activities

Asia PJ: Meetings with SIPO, Academy of Social Sciences,
　　　　　　 and Chinese IP Publisher

The Asia PJ sent a delegation, consisting of 7 members led by WG leader Okamoto from NS Solutions, to Beijing, China during Dec. 10-14, 2013. The main objectives of the delegation were to make clear obscure points on the revised Trademark Law to be implemented next May, to confirm revision trends in the Implementation Rules of the Law and the Examination Guidelines, and to exchange opinions about requests for the revision of the Patent Law in SIPO.

As for the Trademark Law, interviews at the Trademark Office in charge of revising the Implementation Rules of the Law and the Examination Guidelines were canceled at the last minute for the reasons of the very revision works and for trademark examination backlog cases before the revision. On this account, the delegation was given a lecture from Professor Li Mingde of the Academy of Social Sciences on how the revised Trademark Law was established and made clear obscure points and exchanged opinions. The delegation also visited a patent firm and exchanged opinions about the details of the revised Trademark Law.

At the SIPO, the delegation expressed our thanks for the SIPO having developed the past revisions of various laws and regulations such as the Patent Law, the Implementation Rules thereof and Examination Guidelines while exchanging opinions with JIPA. On this occasion, the delegation explained JIPA's requests related to the revision of the Patent Law including relaxation of limitations on amendments, patent term extension, the act of exploitation of patents, and exchanged opinions with SIPO. In addition, the delegation proposed that we should make active exchanges in the future, which SIPO accepted.

The delegation also visited the "Intellectual Property Publisher" on this occasion, was given an explanation of trends in patent information in China, and exchanged opinions. The Intellectual Property Publisher is an external body of SIPO, and while creating and selling IP-related books in China, receives all data on patents, utility models, and trademarks from SIPO to build a database, and provides information to the examiners and the data to private companies as CNIPR. We got information that search is possible in English and Chinese now, but will also be possible in Japanese next January.

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