The 15-year-old Patent Law is set to be amended soon, officials from the National People's Congress (NPC) and the State Intellectual Property Bureau revealed recently. The revision draft will be presented to the NPC Standing Committee for review before the end of this year. It is now being studied by the State Council. The revision is expected to simplify application procedures of patents, provide stronger protection for patent holders and adapt the Patent Law to the Patent Cooperation Treaty so as to facilitate China's accession to the World Trade Organization.

According to Ma Lianyuan, deputy director of State Intellectual Property Bureau, more serious punishment stipulations have been adopted in the draft to combat infringement of patent rights. Patent offices are allowed to investigate such cases. Because of the complicated application rules and the rapid increase of applications, which rose over seven times in the past decade, applicants usually have to wait for months and even years to know if their applications are successful. There are also applications piling up waiting to be reviewed. The telecommunications and computer sectors have over 4,500 and 4,200 applications that are still on the waiting list, which will take all the current appraisers 10 years to finish. Director of the bureau Jiang Ying told the legislators that the bureau has given all its staff an extra 20% load and a 25% extra work load to speed up the review process.