Thirty-eight Chinese government authorities, including the NDRC (National Development and Reform Commission), will share information and impose multiple punishments on entities engaged in severely dishonest behaviors in the field of intellectual property right, such as declining to execute punishments on patent violations and submitting fake documents when applying for patents. 

With the multiple punishments taking effect by the end of 2018, organizations and individuals with records of severe dishonesty regarding intellectual property will face difficulties in buying plane or train tickets.

This reflects the determination of the Chinese government to strictly regulate intellectual property protection. Joint measures taken by multiple (thirty-eight) government authorities have been adapted to the clarified six categories of severe dishonest behaviors in intellectual property rights, especially in Patent section. Two types of punishing measures are proposed for the subjects of the severe dishonest behaviors. The first category is implemented by the State Intellectual Property Office (CNIPA) and is mainly aimed at domestic enterprises or institutions. The other category is jointly implemented by all the other departments, including strengthening the supervision of import and export goods for severe dishonest entities, and focusing on in post-event supervision and ongoing supervision in the acquisition of these dishonest entities by public companies or non-listed companies, and other 33 measures.

The punishments will be applied to executives of these companies and / or individuals, and measures are taken to limit their consumption, such as restrictions on air planes, high-speed train, soft seats on regular train, etc. (for reference, the regular train usually takes 3~5 times duration than the high speed train)

CNIPA will provide a list of subjects of the severe dishonest behaviors to the related government authorities through the national credit information sharing platform, and publicize it on the “Credit China” website (www.creditchina.gov.cn), the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System, and the CNIPA website. All the other departments would execute the joint punishments.

The dishonest behaviors in patent section are:

1. Repeated patent infringement: After the intellectual property office makes an administrative decision through mediation and determines that there is a patent infringement, the infringing party repeatedly infringes the same patent right again.

2. Refusal to execute the decision or punishment: Refusal to execute the administrative decisions or administrative punishment decisions re patent infringing behavior, and preventing local intellectual property offices from conducting investigations and obtaining evidence according to law.

3. Serious illegal acts of patent agency: A patent agency still does not comply with the relevant regulations after being listed in the abnormal operation directory determined by the NIPA for 3 years.

4. Abuse of the patent agent qualification certificates: changing, reselling, leasing, lending the patent agent qualification certificate, or transferring the qualification certificate, registration certificate, practice seal in other ways.

5. Abnormal application for patents: The behaviors that recognized by the NIPA as abnormal patent application as mentioned in the “Several Provisions on Regulating Patent Application Behavior”.

6. Providing false documents in patent applications: If the right holder provides false materials or false documents during the application for patents or related matters, it is deemed to provide false documents.