Blooming business

It seems that the patent business is not affected by the current economic downturn. At lest two of our customers have increased their global patent filing in the past two to three months. I understand that they are preparing for roll out of new product that is cheaper to manufacture; and these improvement include lower the cost to make, transport (reduce weight) and maintain. To make all these patent protection, it also means that their competitors cannot use such new method to produce lower cost product.

I am back with a new hosting service

Hi,
I was busy, then I am lazy, then problem with hosting service. Now I am back. Hopefully I can write / blog more.

How to become a patent attorney in Hong Kong

From Day One, this is a personal view blog, so I share my personal experience.

First, I need to say a few words about not writing for a long long time. When you are busy, you stop for a few weeks, then it extends to a few months. I wanted to pick up again, then I forgot the password. Now that is a push with two comments. So I am back.

There is no such thing as patent attorney in Hong Kong. As there is no independent patent examination in Hong Kong, there is no need for this profession.

Typically a lawyer may take this up as one of the area of practice. There is no formal requirement who can and connot take up patent work.

There is a Asia Patent Attorney Association - Hong Kong Group. Being a member is as close as being a patent attorney in Hong Kong. To become a member, you need a few years experience in patent drafting and execution, and referral from a few members.

Without a membership, if you know what you are doing, and have trust from your clients, and do produce good result, then you can call yourself whatever you like. This is a unregulated profession.

Sent via my phone...

New administrative regulation for patent application

The State Intellectual Property Office of PRC (SIPO) issued a administrative regulation on 27 Aug which will become effective on 1 Oct 2007. As of today, I cannot find the English version on the official web. This is the highlight, with the original numbering:

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....
2. Applicant or Patent Agent should not involved in abnormal patent application;

3. Abnormal patent application includes:
3.1 Same person or legal entity has submitted multiple patent applications with similar contents; or caused to submit multiple patent applications with similar contents.
3.2 Same person or legal entity has submitted multiple patent applications that copy prior arts; or cause to submit multiple patent applications that copy prior arts.
3.2 Patent agent that submit patent applications as described in 3.1 and 3.2.

4. SIPO may take action against abnormal patent application according to patent law and regulations, and may take additional action....
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The Chinese version of this can be found here.

So what happen to incremental improvement to existing technology? On the good side, it protect existing technology, but on the other hand, it discourage small but useful invention. This may be working in line with the recent patent changes in US. However, the new regulation may have a damaging effect on the raise of annual growth of patent application in China, currently running at a rate of 20%+ per year. But like other regulation in China, we cannot only read the words, we really need to wait and see how SIPO exercise the right of this regulation.

Service for inventors in China

Hi, after so many months, I am back. I was planning for expansion of our service offering, so we dont want to limit ourself to handle patent applications in China, Hong Kong, United States and Europe. Let's talk about that later.

While we are brain storming and soul searching, we looked at what type of services are being offered for inventors in China and found something interesting. Here is the first one, with the web site called patent-cn.com, this is a site that post descriptions and most likely pictures, so in case you dont read Chinese, you can still enjoy some good looking pictures.

You may wonder that good looking pictures may not be able to reflect a new technology break through. Yes, that is right, as you may know more than 80% of patent applied in China are design patent, so a picture or two will give you good description of the patent.