On April 1, 2015, the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO)
published a new draft of the fourth amendment to the Chinese patent
law, for solicitation of public comments. Compared with the last
draft which was sent to the State Council for review in January
2013, this version includes some additional changes which appeared
for the very first time.
Patentable Subject Matter
Current Article 25 of the Chinese patent law excludes methods
for the diagnosis or for the treatment of disease from being
granted patent rights. This applies to methods of diagnosis and
methods of treatment for both human beings and animals. However,
Chinese aquaculture, livestock and poultry farming has undergone
significant changes in the past 30 years and there has been an
increasing demand for patent protection of innovations in this
field. The new draft proposes to allow methods for the diagnosis or
for the treatment of disease for farmed animals as patentable
subject matter. This
