The Administration Regulation on National Standards Relating to Patents (Provisional) (hereinafter referred to as the Regulation) jointly drafted by the Standardization Administration of China (SAC) and the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) has been implemented recently.

It’s known that the Regulation prescribes for the first time the issues concerning national standards relating to patents, including disclosure of patent information, patent licensing, and specific provisions on mandatory national standards relating to patents.

In terms of disclosure of patent information, it is provided in the Regulation that in any stage of the formulation and revision of national standards, organizations or individuals participating in the formulation and revision of national standard shall timely disclose to the technical committee or the responsible entity the essential patents owned by and known to them, and provide patent information and corresponding verification materials thereof, and answer for the authenticity of the verification materials.

The Regulation defines further that other than disclosing essential patents, the patentee/patent applicant shall make patent licensing declarations, in which he/she could license any organization or individual, on reasonable and non-discriminatory basis, to practice his/her patent free of charge or with license fee when implementing the national standard, or could disagree with patent licensing according to the above two ways. Without obtaining the patentee/patent applicant’s declaration permitting patent licensing, national standard, unless it is mandatory national standard, shall not include clauses based on the patent.　

The Regulation provides that mandatory national standards generally do not involve patents. Whereby a mandatory national standard indeed must involve patents, and the patentee/patent applicant refuse to make patent licensing declaration as prescribed in the Regulation, SAC, SIPO and relevant departments and the patentee/patent applicant shall jointly negotiate the handling of the patent.

The Regulation also prescribes that before the publication of a mandatory national standard which involves or may involve patents, SAC shall publish the full text of the draft standard and the known patent information for a period of 30 days, which could be extended to 60 days based on application. Any organization or individual may notify SAC in writing additional patent information known to him/her.

Date: January 28, 2014                     

Source: www.gov.cn