As of June 1, 2021, designers and companies will have more
flexibility in obtaining design patent protection in China. Under
the new law, designers will be able to include only a portion of a
product in the design patent claim instead of having to include the
entire product, as is the case currently. For example, under the
new law, a designer may choose to claim the ornamental appearance
of just the sole of a shoe instead of the whole shoe. With the
approach, only the sole would need to be knocked off to infringe
the Chinese design patent. In contrast, under the current law, a
designer would have difficultly trying to protect the ornamental
appearance of only the sole of a shoe because the design patent is
required to claim the whole shoe, and in this situation a knockoff
shoe would have to copy the design of the entire shoe to
infringe.
