According to the requirements of Rule 22.2 of the Implementing Regulations of the Chinese Patent Law, any dependent claim shall only refer to the preceding claim or claims. Any multiple dependent claims, which refer to two or more claims, shall refer to the preceding one in the alternative only, and shall not serve as a basis for any other multiple dependent claims.

    It can be seen from above requirements that such a rule is directed to dependent claims in a set of claims.  Under this situation, if one dependent claim is, for example, written as "4. The coating composition according to claims 1-3 comprising..." while claim 3 refers to claim 1 or 2, it does not comply with the above requirements.

    However, it should be noted that such a rule is not directed to independent claims even if such independent claim refers to the preceding multiple dependent claims.  For example, if an independent claim is written as "A process for making a coated substrate comprising the composition according to any one of claims 1 to 10" while claims 3-10 are multiple dependent claims, such a relationship of reference is allowed and does not need to be amended to comply with the above rule.  In practice, such independent claim is often voluntarily amended into "A process for making a coated substrate comprising the composition according to claim 1", which means that the solutions comprising the composition according to any one of claims 2-10 would be deleted.  In other words, such independent claim contains fewer technical solutions than the original one.  If the deleted technical solutions are required for business by the applicant, such amendments will severely harm the interest of the applicants.

    In addition, when the relationship of reference in claims is amended in order to eliminate the multiple dependencies, it is necessary to consider both clear and concise issues.  To better illustrate this, the following examples are provided:

    -Example I: Claim 4 refers to any one of claims 1-3 and specifically defines terms A-C, wherein term A is present in claim 1, term B is present in claim 2 which refers to claim 1, and term C is present in claim 3 which refers to claim 1 or 2.

    In order to eliminate the multiple dependencies of claim 4, there are generally four options: 1) amending claim 4 to refer to claim 1, 2) amending claim 4 to refer to claim 1 or 2, 3) amending claim 4 to refer to claim 2 and 4) amending claim 4 to refer to claim 3.

    However, if claim 4 is amended according to one of options 1)-3) to eliminate the multiple dependencies, term C in claim 4 will lack basis of reference as there is no term C in claims 1 and 2, which causes claim 4 to be unclear.  It means that although the multiple dependencies are eliminated by the amendment, such amendment leads to new defects to claims, which is not allowed. Therefore, claim 4 should be amended to refer to claim 3 according to option 4).

    -Example II: Claim 2 refers to claim 1 and defines technical feature A, claim 3 refers to claim 1 or 2 and defines technical feature B, and claim 4 refers to any one of claims 1-3 and also defines technical feature A.

    In order to eliminate the multiple dependencies of claim 4, there are generally four options as well: 1) amending claim 4 to refer to claim 1, 2) amending claim 4 to refer to claim 1 or 2, 3) amending claim 4 to refer to claim 2 and 4) amending claim 4 to refer to claim 3.

    However, if claim 4 is amended according to one of options 1)-3) to eliminate the multiple dependencies, the protection scope of amended claim 4 will be the same as claim 2, which causes the claims to be non-concise; and if claim 4 is amended to refer to claim 3 according to option 4), the protection scope of amended claim 4 will be the same as claim 3 when claim 3 refers to claim 2, which also renders claims non-concise. Therefore, for this example, in order to eliminate the multiple dependencies of claim 4, claim 4 should be deleted. Such amendment does not lead to reduction of the technical solutions in claims while eliminating the multiple dependencies.

    To summarize, when modifying the reference relationship of claims in order to the multiple dependencies, issues such as clarity and conciseness should be taken into account.

    Since the requirements and standards for multiple dependencies in China are different from those in Europe and US, foreign applicants need to pay special attention to this issue when applying for patents in China.