On 30 August 2023, China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) issued the Guidelines for Deferred Examination of Invention Patent Applications ("the Guidelines"). Deferred examination of invention patent applications was introduced by the CNIPA via amendments to the Guidelines for Patent Examination in 2019.

 

The Guidelines stipulate that a request for the deferred examination of a patent application shall be made by the applicant at the same time when the applicant files its request for the substantive examination of the patent application. The applicant may opt for a deferment period of 1, 2 or 3 years. The deferred examination will automatically become effective from the date when the request for substantive examination takes effect, and the applicant will be notified in the notice of entering the substantive examination stage of the patent application. There is no fee for requesting a deferred examination.

 

According to the Guidelines, deferred examination can bring certain benefits to the applicant, such as gaining time to adaptively modify the protection scope of the claims and benchmark against relevant standards in the process of formulating standards, to consider whether to continue the patent examination process in response to changes in the market situation, and to coordinate the timing of obtaining the patent grant with market operation of the patent, as well as getting competitive advantage by interfering with competitors' R&D in related fields and increasing their economic costs and time to enter market through the pending claims in the invention patent application with multiple possible amendments.