On September 4, 2023, China’s National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) published Typical Cases of Abnormal Patent Applications. According to CNIPA, these typical cases “warn the actors of irregular patent applications and promote the improvement of the quality of patent applications”.

Typical cases of abnormal patent applications are as follows:
1. Plagiarism of patent applications.
Case 1: an IP agency filed patent applications that plagiarized existing technology. Except for the title of the invention, the contents of the description and claims were the same. The agency voluntarily withdrew the abnormal patent applications after being informed but then submitted multiple identical applications again.
In such situation the agency must be subject to the administrative punishment of “revocation of the practicing license of the patent agency”. Also, the agency must be included in the list of serious violations of law.

2. Filing a patent application using a false address and contact information.
Case 2: In the process of notification and verification of abnormal patent applications, it was found that the addresses and phone numbers of the applicants were found to be incorrect in a large number of patent applications.
CNIPA issued an administrative penalty, ordering agencies to stop accepting new patent agency business for 6 months. Also, such agencies were included in the list of serious illegal and dishonest acts for market supervision and administration.

3. Organizing the fabrication, purchase and sale of patents.
Case 3: An enterprise and 50 companies associated with it hired local college students to fabricate patent applications. These companies changed the applicants of the applications to their own names, and in many of these applications, the inventors were changed. After the examination of the patent applications, the applications were assigned to different parties across the country. Their acts were suspected of buying or reselling the right to apply for a patent at a profit, or the patent right not for the purpose of exploiting the patented technologies but for other illegitimate purposes.