A New Change In China's Patent Examination

Recently, when responding to a First Office Action (hereinafter referred to as "OA1") by only submitting arguments in a bid to pursue the greatest possible scope of protection, as per the usual method from before, you will now be much more likely to receive a Decision of Rejection (hereinafter referred to as "rejection"). Unlike before, the examiner will not allow for another opportunity to modify the claims and limit the scope of protection.

This is the reality that applicants are facing. This year alone, the number of rejections we have received has increased significantly, especially the number of direct rejections issued after an OA1. From our statistics, the number of such rejections from the beginning of this year to date is more than a dozen times that of last year's total, and even more are expected in the future.