The CNIPA Publishes Amendment to Chinese Patent Examination Guidelines

On 13 November 2025, the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) published the Amendment to the Guidelines for Patent Examination, which will take effect on 1 January 2026.

As stated in the explanatory notes of the Amended Guidelines, this amendment aims at further improving examination quality and efficiency by setting forth examination standards for emerging fields and new business models, addressing issues to be pressingly dealt with in examination practice, and consolidating mature practices in examination.

Specifically, among the various changes brought by the Amended Guidelines was the addition of ethical considerations to the examination of artificial intelligence (AI) inventions, together with examples provided to illustrate inventive step examination in this respect and details on drafting requirements for AI invention applications; as well as the introduction of a section on the examination of invention patent applications involving bitstreams.

Also, the Amended Guidelines specify that technical features in the claims that do not contribute to solving the technical problem generally do not bring inventiveness to the technical solution; and add a circumstance where the request for invalidation will not be accepted, namely, where the submission of a request for invalidation does not represent the genuine intent of the petitioner.

The Amended Guidelines further address, among others, the handling of identical inventions-creations filed on the same day, and provide for patent examination upon applicant's request, including priority examination, expedited examination and deferred examination.