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CHINA – Strengthening Intellectual Property Protection from 2020 – 2021
29 Apr 2020
The China National Intellectual Property Administration has issued a Plan for “Implementation of the Opinions on Strengthening Intellectual Property Protection from 2020 to 2021” (“Plan”) on 20 April 2020, which detailing the roadmap to strengthen Intellectual Property Right (“IPR”) Protection in China covering patents, trade secrets, trademarks, copyrights, pharmaceutical products, e-commence as well as plan to deal with piracy, counterfeiting, and enforcement.
We summarize parts of the Plan concerning trade mark (Including infringement and counterfeiting) as follows:
1. Trade Mark Laws and Regulations
• Reviewing and revising Trademark Law as appropriate to strengthen trademark protection and enforcement
• Stipulating punitive compensation for intellectual property infringement
• Refining criminal procedures and penalties, destroy infringing and counterfeit goods, and regulate government disclosures
• Viewing legislative research on the protection of geographical indications (Completed before end of December 2021)
• Revising the measures for the registration and management of collective marks and certification marks (Continue to advance)
• Introducing judicial interpretations to combat online infringement and counterfeiting (Completed before end of August 2020)
• Formulating interpretations of the Supreme People’s Court, Supreme People’s Procuratorate on the specific application of laws in handling criminal cases of intellectual property infringement (3) (Completed before end of August 2020)
• Amending certain provisions on the Anti unfair competition of counterfeiting (Continue to advance)
• Studying and compiling management standards for intellectual property protection of e-commerce platforms and formulating policy documents to control piracy, infringement and counterfeiting on e-commerce platforms (Completed before end of October 2020)
• Formulating policy documents for the destruction of infringing and counterfeit goods (Completed before end of July 2020)
2. Strengthen the administrative enforcement and judicial protection of intellectual property rights
• Formulating and issuing standards for trademark infringement judgment (Completed before end of June 2020)
• Publishing annual report on typical cases for patents, trademarks, copyrights, new varieties of agricultural plants and other types, as well as administrative enforcement and judicial protection in the fields of customs and cultural markets (Completed before end of December 2021 and continue to advance)
• Cracking down on counterfeit goods with health and safety risks, increasing the frequency of handling cases, and establishing a system to publicly release the above-mentioned law enforcement action data and information on a quarterly basis (Completed before end of May 2020)
• Promoting pilot inspection and identification of trademark infringement disputes, improving the inspection and identification system for intellectual property infringement disputes, and studying and establishing an infringement damage assessment system (Continue to advance)
• Organizing special actions for intellectual property law enforcement protection, destruction of infringing and counterfeit commodities, and crack down on intellectual property infringement (Continue to advance)
3. Improve the construction of a large-scale intellectual property protection mechanism
• Studying and establishing a connection and information sharing mechanism for trademark administrative confirmation and major infringement administrative law enforcement cases and carrying out pilot projects (Continue to advance)
• Carrying out pilot projects of hierarchical classification supervision based on credit in the field of intellectual property and regulating bad faith trademark registration (Completed before end of December 2021 and continue to advance)
4. Optimizing key links for fast protection of intellectual property
• Improving trademark examinations capabilities by shortening the examination period to less than 4 months (Completed before end of December 2021)
• Exploring a rapid review mechanism for trademark registration, modification, renewal and other applications (Continue to advance)
• Intensifying the itinerant trademark review cases and establishing an open review mechanism for major cases (Continue to advance)
• Formulating the management, training and quality control related regulations of the Intellectual Property Protection Center and enhancing the ability of rapid collaborative protection (Completed before end of December 2020)
5. Expand foreign exchange and cooperation in intellectual property protection
• Improving overseas intellectual property information service, early warning and other platforms, strengthen the dynamic tracking and research mechanism construction of major trade countries (regions) intellectual property laws and policies revisions and major dispute cases, and building overseas trademark dispute case databases (Continue to advance)
6. Strengthen the protection of intellectual property protection resources
• Strengthening the construction of infringement and counterfeiting administrative law enforcement and criminal justice information sharing platforms (Continue to advance)
• Promoting the establishment of an information system platform to combat IPR infringement cases (Continue to advance)
7. Promote intellectual property protection publicity and cultural construction
• Continuing to run large-scale publicity activities such as the National Intellectual Property Publicity Week, China Intellectual Property Annual Conference, China International Trademark and Brand Festival, etc (Continue to advance)
8. Strengthen the protection of intellectual property protection organizations
• Carrying out performance appraisal of cracking down on the infringement of IPR and the manufacture and sale of counterfeit and shoddy goods (Continue to advance)
• Improving piracy report reward mechanism for IPR infringement (Continue to advance)
You will see that the CNIPA is actively pursuing changes / implementations in respect of IPR protection within two years, so we may need to wait and see on the updates of CNIPA in the coming years for the outcome of the Plan.
Full version of the Implementation Plan can be found from the following link: https://www.cnipa.gov.cn/art/2020/4/20/art_53_118147.html (in Chinese only)
Should you have any questions related to this article, please contact evelyne.yeung@oln-law.com and we will be pleased to answer and assist.
Disclaimer: This article is for reference only. Nothing herein shall be construed as Hong Kong legal advice or any legal advice for that matter to any person. Oldham, Li & Nie shall not be held liable for any loss and/or damage incurred by any person acting as a result of the materials contained in this article.
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