China to Remove Infringing Pharmaceuticals from Procurement Platforms

In the “Opinions of the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) and the National Healthcare Security Administration (NHSA) on Strengthening the Protection of Intellectual Property Rights in the Field of Centralized Pharmaceutical Procurement” (国家知识产权局 国家医疗保障局关于加强医药集中采购领域知识产权保护的意见) released December 30, 2022, the CNIPA and the NHSA will coordinate to remove infringing pharmaceuticals listed on central procurement platforms.

According to the Interpretation of the Opinions, 

Articles 4 to 7 of the “Opinions” strengthen specific business cooperation in four aspects: establishing an independent commitment system for enterprises, doing a good job in resolving disputes and guiding work, strengthening cooperation to stop infringement, and analyzing and judging key products. The first is to prevent the risk of infringement in advance. When participating in centralized procurement with volume, the enterprise should independently promise that there is no relevant intellectual property infringement in the relevant products. The second is to efficiently resolve infringement disputes in accordance with the law. The centralized pharmaceutical procurement organization can inform the relevant parties to request adjudication from the intellectual property management department or file a lawsuit in the people’s court, and the intellectual property management department will handle the relevant cases efficiently in accordance with the law. Centralized pharmaceutical procurement institutions shall verify the qualifications of online procurement products based on the information released by relevant departments, and if they find that there is a clear infringement, they must withdraw the pharmaceutical from the network in a timely manner in accordance with laws and regulations. The third is to improve the mechanism for handling infringement cases after judgement. The intellectual property management department will promptly copy the relevant case handling documents to the NHSA. The NHSA guides the centralized pharmaceutical procurement agencies to deal with it according to law, and will not list the infringing products on the platform; the infringing products involved in the case that have been listed on the platform or have been selected in the centralized procurement shall be promptly withdrawn from the network…

The Opinions are available here (Chinese only). Interpretation here (Chinese only).

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