4  August, 2012

Legal News & Analysis – Asia Pacific – China – Intellectual Property

China Patent Inquiry System (“CPIS”) was opened recently by China State Intellectual Property Office (“SIPO”). It provides windows to e-filing registered users and public users respectively, enabling the e-filing registered users to view the patent status, application document as filed and other official documents submitted, whilst public users are only able to check the official documents including the search report issued by SIPO after publication of the China applications filed after 10 February 2010. The information for e-filing registered users is updated once a day, while information for the public users is updated once a week.

To access CPIS, the public users only need to input application number, name of applicant or title of the patent/patent application through the link http://publicquery.sipo.gov.cn/

CPIS provides the public with an official route to view real-time status information for all the actions taken by SIPO after the application is published. Although the responses to the office action are not published for the time being, SIPO may hopefully open it to the public in future.