Patent Law

On December 27, 2009, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress passed the amendments to the Patent Act.  Tian Junfeng, an attorney with Unitalen Attorneys at Law, analyzed China's Patent Law and Foreign Trade Law and shares some insights in this article. China Business Weekly will run the article in several issues. Below is an excerpt from the first part of it which appeared in the January 12, 2009 issue of China Daily:

Numerous multinational companies, such as Microsoft, IBM, Lucent, Hewlett-Packard, Samsung, Philips, Motorola, Nokia, have established their R&D centers in China, respectively. Up to now, the number of foreign companies that have set up R & D centers in China has exceeded 1,000.

Most of these companies are ranked in the world top 500. They established their R&D centers in China in order to meet demands for localization of products, technologies and services, and to promote their enterprise image. They also want to sharpen their competitive edge in the local market by exploiting the rich human resources of technical professionals and taking advantage of the low capital costs. This has become an important part of their localization strategy.

Although these R&D centers are playing an ever-important role in technological innovation and making great achievements, they have encountered all sorts of problems in implementing their patent strategies so as to better protect their R&D achievements. One of the outstanding problems is how to transfer their technological breakthroughs abroad.

Regarding this issue, there are relevant provisions in China's Patent Law, the Foreign Trade Law and others.

Mr. Junfeng goes on to discuss the implications of Articles 8, 10 and 20 of the Patent Law on R&D.  See the full article here.