The 22nd session of the 13th NPC Standing Committee voted on the October 17th and approved the revised Patent Law (for details, please refer to https://www.cnipa.gov.cn/art/2020/10/18/art_ 53_ 153525.html and  the attachment in Chinese）. The new Law will take effect on June 1, 2021.

The revision of the Patent Law mainly includes three aspects: 1.  Strengthen the protection of the legitimate rights and interests of patentees, including increasing the compensation for infringement of patent rights, improving the burden of proof, improving the pre-litigation behavior preservation measures, improving the administrative protection of patent, adding the principle of honesty and credibility, adding the patent term extension system and relevant provisions on the early settlement procedure of pharmaceutical patent disputes, etc. 2. Promote the exploitation and utilization of patents, including improving the service invention system, adding patent open license system, and strengthening patent transformation services. 3. Improve the patent granting system, including further improving the design protection system, increasing the applicability situation of novelty grace period, and improving the patent evaluation report system, etc.

In order to further strengthen the protection of intellectual property rights, a new punitive compensation system has been added to the Patent Law. The people's court can determine the amount of compensation within one to five times the amount calculated according to the loss suffered by the rights holder, the interests obtained by the infringer or the multiple of the patent royalty, to give full play to the deterrent force of the law. The revised Patent Law also increases the amount of statutory compensation, raising the upper limit to 5 million RMB and the lower limit to 30,000 RMB.

In order to meet the actual needs of enterprises, the revised Patent Law further improves the design related system. One is to provide the patent protection of partial design. The second is to extend the protection term of design patent to 15 years. The third is to add the domestic priority system of design patent application; make clear that the applicant who has filed a patent application for the same subject in China within six months from the date of filing the first patent application for design in China can enjoy the priority right.

In order to better respond to emergency and extraordinary situations such as epidemic prevention and control, promote the timely application of relevant invention and creations in disease treatment and other aspects, and respond to the need of innovation subjects to relax the exception of not losing novelty, the Patent Law adds in applicable situations of exception for no loss of novelty: "in case of national emergency or extraordinary circumstances, made public for the first time, for the purpose of public interests."