Chapter II Application for Patent

Article l6 Anyone who applies for a patent in written form shall file with the patent administration department under the State Council application documents in two copies.

Anyone who applies for a patent in other forms as provided by the patent administration department under the State Council shall comply with the relevant provisions.

Any applicant who appoints a patent agency for applying for a patent, or for having other patent matters to attend to before the patent administration department under the State Council, shall submit at the same time a power of attorney indicating the scope of the power entrusted.

Where there are two or more applicants and no patent agency is appointed, unless otherwise stated in the request, the applicant named first in the request shall be the representative.

Article l7 "Other related matters" in the request referred to in Article 26, paragraph two of the Patent Law mean:

(1) the nationality of the applicant;

(2) where the applicant is an enterprise or other organization, the name of the country in which the applicant has the principal business office;

(3) where the applicant has appointed a patent agency, the relevant matters which shall be indicated; where no patent agency is appointed, the name, address, postcode and telephone number of the liaison person;

(4) where the priority of an earlier application is claimed, the relevant matters which shall be indicated;

(5) the signature or seal of the applicant or the patent agency;

(6) a list of the documents constituting the application;

(7) a list of the documents appended to the application; and

(8) any other related matter which needs to be indicated.

Article l8 The description of an application for a patent for invention or utility model shall state the title of the invention or utility model, which shall be the same as it appears in the request. The description shall include the following:

(1) technical field: specifying the technical field to which the technical solution to be protected pertains;

(2) background art: indicating the background art which can be regarded as useful for the understanding, searching and examination of the invention or utility model, and when possible, citing the documents reflecting such art;

(3) contents of the invention: disclosing the technical problem the invention or utility model aims to settle and the technical solution adopted to resolve the problem; and stating, with reference to the prior art, the advantageous effects of the invention or utility model;

(4) description of figures: briefly describing each figure in the drawings, if any;

(5) mode of carrying out the invention or utility model: describing in detail the optimally selected mode contemplated by the applicant for carrying out the invention or utility model; where appropriate, this shall be done in terms of examples, and with reference to the drawings, if any;

The manner and order referred to in the preceding paragraph shall be followed by the applicant for a patent for invention or for utility model, and each of the parts shall be preceded by a heading, unless, because of the nature of the invention or utility model, a different manner or order would result in a better understanding and a more economical presentation.

The description of the invention or utility model shall use standard terms and be in clear wording, and shall not contain such references to the claims as: "as described in claim …", nor shall it contain commercial advertising.

Where an application for a patent for invention contains disclosure of one or more nucleotide and/or amino acid sequences, the description shall contain a sequence listing in compliance with the standard prescribed by the patent administration department under the State Council. The sequence listing shall be submitted as a separate part of the description, and a copy of the said sequence listing in machine-readable form shall also be submitted in accordance with the provisions of the patent administration department under the State Council.

Article l9 The same sheet of drawings may contain several figures of the invention or utility model, and the figures shall be numbered and arranged in numerical order consecutively as "Figure l, Figure 2, …".

The scale and the distinctness of the drawings shall be as such that a reproduction with a linear reduction in size to two-thirds would still enable all details to be clearly distinguished.

Reference signs not mentioned in the text of the description of the invention or utility model shall not appear in the drawings. Reference signs not appearing in the drawings shall not appear in the text of the description. Reference signs for the same composite part shall be used consistently throughout the application document.

The drawings shall not contain any other explanatory notes, except words which are indispensable.

Article 20 The claims shall define clearly and concisely the matter for which protection is sought in terms of the technical features of the invention or utility model.

If there are several claims, they shall be numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals.

The technical terminology used in the claims shall be consistent with that used in the description. The claims may contain chemical or mathematical formulae but no drawings. They shall not, except where absolutely necessary, contain such references to the description or drawings as: "as described in part …of the description", or "as illustrated in Figure …of the drawings".

The technical features mentioned in the claims may, in order to facilitate quicker understanding of the claim, make reference to the corresponding reference signs in the drawings of the description. Such reference signs shall follow the corresponding technical features and be placed in parentheses. They shall not be construed as limiting the claims.

Article 2l The claims shall have an independent claim, and may also contain dependent claims.

The independent claim shall outline the technical solution of an invention or utility model and state the essential technical features necessary for the solution of its technical problem.

The dependent claim shall, by additional technical features, further define the claim that it refers to.

Article 22 An independent claim of an invention or utility model shall contain a preamble portion and a characterizing portion, and be presented in the following form:

(1) a preamble portion: indicating the title of the claimed subject matter of the technical solution of the invention or utility model, and those technical features which are necessary for the definition of the claimed subject matter but which, in combination, are part of the most related prior art;

(2) a characterizing portion: stating, in such words as "characterized in that… "or in similar expressions, the technical features of the invention or utility model, which distinguish it from the most related prior art. Those features, in combination with the features stated in the preamble portion, serve to define the scope of protection of the invention or utility model.

Where the manner specified in the preceding paragraphs is not appropriate to be followed because of the nature of the invention or utility model, an independent claim may be presented in a different manner.

An invention or utility model shall have only one independent claim, which shall precede all the dependent claims relating to the same invention or utility model.