Effective January 1, 2026, the China National Intellectual Property Administration’s (CNIPA) implemented revisions to its Order No. 84. The following is a summary of the revisions with respect to (1) artificial intelligence, (2) digital/streaming media, and (3) plant varieties.
Artificial Intelligence:
- Amending the title of Section 6 to include the word “artificial intelligence”
- Adding examination standards to Article 5 which require that inventions involving artificial intelligence must comply with national laws and regulations and social ethics; If the invention contains content that violates laws, social morality, or harms public interests, it cannot be granted
- Adding two new examination examples to clarify determining inventiveness of patent applications in the field of artificial intelligence:
- if the application scenarios are different but the algorithm and models are the same, the invention lacks inventiveness; and
- if the application scenarios are the same or similar, but the algorithms or models are different, and there are substantial adjustments made compared to the prior art, the invention is inventive
- For patent applications, specific writing standards should be set to require full disclosure in the application’s specifications relating to any technical means to ensure adequate disclosure and protection
Digital/Streaming Media:
- Simple bitstreams are not subject to patent protection
- Claims regarding the storing and/or transmission of bitstreams should be based on the specific method that generated the bitstream, and written to include all characteristics of the encoding method
- Claims can meet the writing requirements by following the format:
- media + program/instruction + bitstream + processor execution program/instruction to implement video encoding method to generate bitstream
Plant Varieties:
- “Plant varieties” defined under Section 4.4 “Animal and Plant Varieties” Chapter 1, Part II
- Clarification that naturally occurring wild plants, not artificially bred or improved, and not processed by human technical means are classified as scientific discovery and are not subject to patent protection
- Artificially bred or modified wild plants cannot be considered “plant varieties” if its propagation material does not have consistent morphological and biological characteristics, or relatively stable genetic traits in the plant population
Other Changes:
- Handling of “dual filings”
- Only one patent can be granted for same invention; therefore, if no rejection is issued, then applicant is notified to relinquish its utility model patent rights
- At time of filing, applicant must explain the “dual filing” or the application may be rejected
- Applicant must waive its utility model patent right in order to obtain authorization to grant the invention patent application, if there are no rejections
- Review standards for creativity
- Inventiveness is a requirement, the number of technical features in the claims that solve a technical requirement do not satisfy the inventive requirement