Patent Litigation In China

1. Types of Intellectual Property Rights & Granting Procedure

1.1 Types of Intellectual Property Rights

The Chinese legal system provides patent protection for inventions.There are three types of patents under Patent Law, namely a patent for an invention, a patent for a utility model and a patent for a design. Inventions could be also be protectable as trade secrets under the Chinese legal system. Indeed, before the inventor or other relevant applicant files a patent application regarding an invention, the invention should be kept as a trade secret to meet the novelty requirement under Patent Law. Alternatively, some inventions may be suitable for keeping a trade secret rather than being protected as a patent because a trade secret can be protected indefinitely as long as it can be kept secret, whereas a patent has a limited term of protection. Patent rights and trade secrets are both based on statutory law in the Chinese legal system.