On August 13, 2023, China’s State Council released the Opinions of the State Council on Further Optimizing the Foreign Investment Environment and Enhancing the Attraction of Foreign Investment (国务院关于进一步优化外商投资环境 加大吸引外商投资力度的意见).  The Opinions propose 24 policy measures in 6 aspects including two for intellectual property: strengthening the administrative protection of intellectual property rights and strengthening law enforcement regarding intellectual property rights.

A translation of the two IP related measures follow:

(10)  Strengthening the administrative protection of intellectual property rights. We shall improve the system for making administrative adjudication on patent infringement disputes and strengthen the enforcement of administrative adjudication. All regions shall be supported to rely on the intellectual property workstations for exhibitions, accept the applications for intellectual property rights such as copyrights, patents and trademarks of the products to be exhibited, and provide effective measures for the prevention of infringement. We shall strengthen the protection of intellectual property rights in the procurement of drugs and medical consumables, and an enterprise must, when participating in the procurement activities, independently promise that it does not violate any law or regulation such as the Patent Law. For products involving disputes over intellectual property rights, the relevant departments shall strengthen communication and consultation, and conduct procurement activities in accordance with the laws and regulations, and take timely measures such as not approving procurement and disqualifying the products for selection which have been determined by the administrative ruling of the intellectual property department or by an effective judgment of the people’s court as infringing a patent.

(11)  Strengthening law enforcement regarding intellectual property rights. We shall resolutely crack down on the infringement upon the intellectual property rights of foreign-funded enterprises, and carry out special law enforcement actions against trans-regional and chain-based infringement acts. We shall improve the mechanism for rapid and coordinated protection of intellectual property rights, accelerate the handling of cases with clear facts and conclusive evidence in accordance with the law, establish and improve an online and offline integrated law enforcement mechanism, and appropriately simplify procedural requirements.

The full text of the Opinions is available here (Chinese only).