Does China's patent law system provide an adequate response to the innovation characteristics of China's telecommunications industry?

Abstract

The primary purpose of a patent system is to promote innovation by encouraging inventions. In China, the supportive policies and legislation created by the authorities as well as the rapidly increasing number of patent applications show that China’s patent law system has responded positively to innovation. This paper aims to investigate whether China’s patent law system is capable of promoting innovation from an industry-specific perspective. Using the analytical framework set out by Burk and Lemley, this paper looks into how the industry-specific nature of China’s patent law system is applied and how it affects innovation of China’s Telecommunications Industry (CTI).

Specifically, this paper explores how the application of flexible legal provisions that are open to interpretation – those concerning “technical solutions” and “persons skilled in the art” – interacts with the innovation characteristics of CTI. This paper argues that although the flexible legal provisions of China’s Patent Law in the China’s patent law system have provided substantial discretion to judges and patent examiners to take into account industry-specific innovation characteristics in theory, the application of China’s Patent Law overlooks the industry-specific nature of China’s Patent Law as well as the innovation characteristics of CTI. This paper employs doctrinal analysis, interviews and comparative studies to develop the argument of this paper.