Legal News

The “Trademark Law” provides principles for the protection of trademark exclusive rights. The enforcement agencies do not have a consistency on handling similar cases. Therefore, the CNIPA released the “Judging Criteria for Trademark Infringement” (“Judging Criteria”) on June 15, 2020.  The Judging Criteria provide specific judgment standards and requirements for enforcement agencies, and the main contents are as follows: 1.The judging criteria on the “identical goods” and “similar goods” The “identical goods” refers to the name of goods actually produced and sold by the suspected tortfeasor is the same as the name of commodity of others approved to use the…

Since the implementation of the “Measures on Security Examination for Online Products and Services (Trial Implementation)” in 2017, various practical problems jumped out. For example, it is stipulated that online products and services providers shall be responsible for the cybersecurity examination, however, most of those providers are not the operators of the online platform, it is not reasonable and practical for them to conduct the examination. Under this circumstance, on April 13, 2020, the Cyberspace Administration Office and other 11 departments jointly released the “Cybersecurity Review Measures” (the “Measures”), and its main contents include: The operator shall be responsible for…

In 2016, the State Council released the “Opinions of the State Council on Establishing A Fair Competition Examination System in the Building of the Market System” (Guo Fa [2016] No.34) (hereinafter referred to as the “Opinions”). The “Opinions” has been implemented for several years, and there are a few problems in practice. Therefore, on May 9, 2020, the SAMR, NDRC, MOF and MOFCOM have jointly issued the “Notice on Further Promoting Fair Competition Review” (Guo Shi Jian Fan Long Duan [2020] No.73) (hereinafter referred to as the “Notice”). The main contents include: 1. To add the object of review The…

From December 29, 2019, according to the “Decision of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress on Authorizing the Supreme People’s Court to Carry out the Pilot Program for the Reform of Separating Complicated Civil Proceedings from Simple Ones in Some Areas”, the 2 years period of the pilot program was kicked off. The pilot program is aimed to optimize judicial confirmation procedures, improve the petty lawsuit procedure, improve summary procedure rules, expand the scope of application of the sole-judge system, and improve electronic litigation rules. After several months of implementation, recently, the Supreme People’s Court has released the…

The “Several Provisions of the Supreme People’s Court on Evidence for Civil Actions” (hereinafter referred to as the “2001 Version”) has been adopted for nearly 20 years, and it could not solve the new problems in the civil judicial practice, such as a party take advantage of the evidence rules maliciously, the implementation of the expert opinions, electronic data and etc.. In view of this, the Judicial Committee of the Supreme People’s Court adopted the amendment of the “Several Provisions of the Supreme People’s Court on Evidence for Civil Actions” on Oct. 14, 2019, and the amendment will come into…

Cryptography is the core technology and fundamental support for the protection of cyber and information security. It also has a significant influence on a country’s security on politics, economic, national defense and information. However, in China, the legislation concerning cryptography is poor. In 1999, the State Council issued the “Regulations for the Administration of Commercial Cryptography”, and in nearly 20 years, a few supporting regulations were issued. The administration on manufacturing, selling products; providing service; using and importing products with cryptography, and etc., could not meet the needs in practice. Under such circumstance, at the end of 2019, the Standing…

The “Foreign Investment Law” is promulgated on 15 Mar. 2019 and has been implemented from 1 Jan. 2020. As the supplementary regulation, the “Implementation Regulations for the Foreign Investment Law” (hereinafter referred to as the “Implementation Regulations”) is promulgated on 31 Dec. 2019, and has been implemented on the following day. Compared with the “Foreign Investment Law”, the “Implementation Regulations” has provided some detailed provisions and guiding opinions. Here are several key aspects for reference. 1.The investors of a foreign-invested enterprise include Chinese natural persons. The “Law on Sino-foreign Equity Joint Ventures” and the “Law on Sino-foreign Cooperative Joint Ventures”,…

The Supreme People’s Court issued the “Notice of the Supreme People’s Court on Issuing the Minutes of the National Court Work Conference for Civil and Commercial Trials” (Fa [2019] No.254, hereinafter referred to as the “Minutes”) on 8 Nov. 2019. The Minutes has stipulates the determination rules on difficult issues related to 9 categories of disputes, such as the company, contract, guarantee, bankruptcy and etc.. The Minutes has also stipulates the rules on dealing with the problems related to civil procedures, such as the connection of laws for the application of the General Rules of the Civil Law, hearing of…

One of the key amendment aspects is the regulations on the honesty and integrity principle, such as the responsibilities related to the use of trademarks, curbing malicious trademark applications and trademark agencies. In order to better implement those articles, recently, SAIC releases the “Several Provisions on Standardizing Application for Trademark Registration” (the “Provisions”), we have picked out some practical articles for your reference. 1. To deal with circumstances which the application of a trademark has violated the reasons as stipulated in the “Provisions” In the application session, the trademark registration authorities shall reject and refuse to gazette. In the preliminarily…

On 23rd Sep. 2019, SIPO released the newly amended “Guidelines for Patent Examination”, which will come into force from 1st Nov. 2019. The amended version has amended many aspects, among which the amendment on the examination on the design patent related to Graphic User Interfaces (“GUI”) is eye-catching. 1. Requirements on the product’s name The amended version requires the name should indicate GUI’s main purpose and the products to which it is applied. Generally, there must be keywords of “graphical user interface” and a key word of “dynamic” shall be contained in the product name of the dynamic GUI. 2.…