A new draft amendment of Patent Examination Guidelines was
published on April 4, 2019. The solicitation of public opinions
will end on May 5, 2019. There are two significant proposed changes
to Chinese practice in this draft. It is quite interesting that
such big changes can simply be realized by changing the patent
office's examination guideline.
Human Embryonic Stem Cell
The draft amendment allows patents to be granted to some
inventions related to human embryonic stem cells. Under the current
Chinese practice, such inventions will not be granted patent right
due to violation of social ethics according to Article 5 of Chinese
patent law. As per the draft amendment, if an invention is to
separate or to obtain stem cell from a human embryo which is within
14 days of fertilization and has not gone through in vivo
development, it should not be rejected on the basis of violation of
social ethics.
