New Guidelines to Strengthen Remuneration for Service Inventors at Chinese Government Authorities
On 7 January 2013, 13 Chinese government authorities including the State Intellectual Property Office of China (SIPO) jointly issued “Several Opinions on Further Strengthening the Protection of the Legitimate Rights and Interests of Inventors of Service Inventions to Promote the Application and Implementation of Intellectual Property Rights”.
The Opinions provide a number of guidelines on service invention for state-owned enterprises/institutions and military entities. One aspect in the Opinions that attracts most attention is the stipulated minimum standard of reward and remuneration for service inventions.
According to item 8 of the Opinions, in the absence of any prior agreement with the inventor(s) of a service invention or internal regulation regarding reward and remuneration for service inventions, the state-owned enterprise/institution or the military entity, in implementing the patent for the service invention, shall award to the service inventor(s) concerned reward and remuneration in total of not less than 3% of the business profit from the implementation of the patent.
In case of licensing or assignment of an invention patent, or using an invention patent as investment for shares, the reward and remuneration paid in total to the service inventor(s) concerned shall not be less than 20% of the assignment fees or license fees received or of the ratio of investment contributed in connection with the patent.
As for other intellectual property rights of a state-owned enterprise/institution or military entity, the reward and remuneration for the service inventor(s) may also refer to the proportions stated above.
