Legal News

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.…

As the product of industrial AI, the industrial internet uses the internet to connect people, machines and objects. The industrial internet has developed rapidly in recent years. In the operation of the industrial internet, a large amount of data would be collected, analyzed, transmitted, and archived. Those data may involve personal privacy, corporate trade secrets, and even state secrets. In order to strengthen the data protection, the state has successively released the “Cyber Security Law”, the “Industrial Control Network Security Risk Assessment Specification”, and national standards. In order to further strengthen the administration on the industrial internet security, MIIT and…

The Shanghai Municipal People’s Government has released the beneficial policy on promoting development of regional headquarters of multinational companies from 2002, and updated the relevant policy every few years. Recently, in order to further attract foreign investments, and level up the quality of foreign investments, the government has updated the policy again, which is the “Several Opinions of Shanghai Municipal People’s Government on Promoting Development of Regional Headquarters of Multinational Companies in the Municipality” (Hu Fu Gui [2019] No.30, hereinafter referred to as the “Opinions”). The main points are as follows: 1. To reduce the determination standards (1) To relax…

For a long time, the monopoly behaviors could be regulated by 3 departments, which are the SAMR, NDRC and MOFCOM. The cross-administration makes the original “Interim Provisions on Prohibiting Monopoly Agreements” (the “Original Provisions”) issued in 2011 by SAIC (the predecessor of SAMR), could not be implemented smoothly. On Mar. 2018, CPC Central Committee issued the “Proposal for Deepening the Reform of the Party and State Institutions”, in which SAMR has been assigned as the department which shall conduct the anti-monopoly enforcement comprehensively. Recently, SAMR has issued 3 supplementary regulations for the “Anti-monopoly Law”. The 3 regulations include, the “Interim…