March 2, 2021
On February 10th, 2021, CNIPA releases “Measures upon regulating Patent Application” (draft for comment). This draft defines the term of Patent abnormal and its punishments.
Abnormal Patent Application behavior is defined as:
– Simultaneously or successively submitting multiple patent applications that are obviously the same invention-creation, or are essentially formed by simple combinations of different invention-creation features or elements;
– The submitted patent application contains fabricated, forged or altered inventions and creations, experimental data or technical effects, or plagiarism, simple replacement, patchwork of existing technology or existing designs, etc.;
– The invention-creation of the submitted patent application is obviously inconsistent with the applicant’s actual research and development capabilities and resource conditions;
– The invention-creation content of the submitted patent application is mainly randomly generated using computer programs or other technologies;
– The invention-creation of the submitted patent application is an invention that is deliberately formed for the purpose of evading patentability examination and is obviously inconsistent with technical improvement or design common sense, or has no actual protection value, or unnecessarily reduces the scope of protection, or contains no contents of search or examination significance;
– In order to evade the regulatory measures against irregular patent applications, multiple patent applications that are substantially associated with or under the control of a specific applicant are submitted in a scattered or sequential order or in a different location;
– Based on an original application with authorization prospects, multiple divisional applications are proactively filed, but there is essentially no legal or technical necessity;
– Not buying or reselling patent application rights or patent rights for the implementation of patented technologies, designs, or other legitimate and reasonable legal purposes, or falsely altering inventors or designers;
– Patent agencies, patent attorneys, or other institutions or individuals who induce, abet or conspire with others, or know or should know that it is an abnormal patent application and act as an agent or help others to implement various types of abnormal patent applications;
– Other irregular patent applications and related actions that violate the principle of good faith and disrupt the normal order of patent work.
According to the draft, there have are criminal liabilities and can cause a transfer to relevant agencies for criminal investigation and prosecution.