So, last week, I got an inquiry from a colleague in Romania (Thank you Cristina Adriana SIRBU VULTUR). She told me that one of her clients got a notification of partial refusal when extending the protection of its Madrid application to China. In order for the trademark to pass, her client agreed with the examiner’s opinion. She asked me what should we respond to this?
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The 2022 Lingnan Intellectual Property Litigation Conference, jointly organized by Guangdong Knowledge Economy Development Promotion Association and Guangzhou Lawyers Association, was held on June 1st, 2022. Mr. Fu Yichang from Jiaquan IP Law was invited to attend the conference and accepted the 2021 Lingnan Outstanding IP Cases Award.

Represented by Jiaquan IP Law, an administrative litigation dispute case on invalidation of patents in the field of biomedicine was selected as a typical case of intellectual property rights in 2021 by Guangdong IP Protection Association.

In recent years, the number of trademark applications in China has been at the forefront of the world. In 2021 alone, the total number of new trademark applications in China was nearly 9.45 million. Especially with the explosive growth of small and micro enterprises and the rising of service-oriented consumption, the demand for trademark applications has been increasing rapidly.
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I had a really nice discussion on one hypothetical case with a university professor of IP the other day, which was indeed enlightening and informative. Can't share it all in this post, but still want to share some info here. Hope you will find it interesting to read.
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During the process of patent examination, many applicants are required to revise their applications on the ground of lacking unity of invention, because the examiner decides that the application contains multiple inventions. Under such circumstances, the applicant may file divisional applications per the examiner’s requests. The initial patent application will thus be divided into two or more applications in order to meet the unity requirement, and these divisional applications may retain the initial application filing date. The priority date may be retained as well if priority had been claimed in the initial application.

Dr. Xiuping Ou, a senior advisor at Jiaquan IP Law, was among the second batch of officially designated National Experts on Overseas Intellectual Property Disputes and has also become a member of the Executive Advisory Committee of the International IP Commercialization Council (IIPCC).

The patent practice of each jurisdiction has its own running way. But meanwhile, these are connected by various terms, treaties, and organizations - such as the Paris Convention and the PCT. And in addition to some large systems like these two, there are other smaller cooperative relationships just between two or several jurisdictions.

An updated governmental notification was received on April 14. Info can be summarized below. I kindly draw concerned people's attention here.

When people talk about different countries, the building or facility that represented the country is always one of the topics. And many of these have their special meanings in the political aspect, like the White House in the US, Buckingham Palace in the UK, Versailles in France, and the Kremlin in Russia. Citizens in these countries must be proud of their landmarks. But are these available for trademark applications in China? Similar questions are frequently received.