The General Office of the China National Intellectual Property Administration ("CNIPA") recently issued the Circular on Further Improving the Certification Quality of the Implementation of Standards for Enterprise Intellectual Property Management System (the "Circular").

The Circular touches upon contents of four aspects, including: (1) effectively raising the awareness of enterprises to independently carry out high-quality certification of the implementation of standards; (2) continuously optimizing the supply of high-standard certification service for the implementation of standards; (3) actively creating a policy environment for high-quality certification of the implementation of standards; and (4) striving to create a comprehensive service carrier for high-level certification of the implementation of standards.

In particular, the Circular calls for regarding the examination of the effectiveness of the implementation of standards as important content of the internal audit of an enterprise and the external audit by a certification body, and conducting a monitoring and evaluation of the changes in the quality of intellectual property rights and the improvement of benefits before and after the implementation of standards to realize the change from "focusing on form" to "focusing on effect".

The Circular also stipulates that passing the certification of implementation of standards for intellectual property rights shall not be deemed as an important condition for applying for other intellectual property projects to mandatorily require enterprises to carry out the standards implementation certification in disguised form. Meanwhile, it is not allowed to set policy thresholds by placing mandatory conditions such as early establishment of certification bodies and large market scale to form a monopoly and affect fair competition.

(Source: China National Intellectual Property Administration)