According to the requirements of Rule 22.2 of the
Implementing Regulations of the Chinese Patent Law, any
dependent claim shall only refer to the preceding claim or claims.
Any multiple dependent claims, which refer to two or more claims,
shall refer to the preceding one in the alternative only, and shall
not serve as a basis for any other multiple dependent claims.
It can be seen from above requirements that such a rule is
directed to dependent claims in a set of claims. Under this
situation, if one dependent claim is, for example, written as
"4. The coating composition according to claims 1-3
comprising..." while claim 3 refers to claim 1 or 2, it does
not comply with the above requirements.
