On June 4, 2025, Nanjing’s Intellectual Property Protection Center (NIPPC) announced it is banning the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in drafting patent application documents submitted for pre-examination. China’s pre-examination system enables applicants to submit their patent applications to a regional office for an initial examination and potentially receive expedited examination at China’s National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) if certain conditions are met. The NIPPC stated that it was determined that “relevant content [of patent applications] was directly generated by artificial intelligence.”
The NIPPC stated:
I、 Clear prohibition requirements
1. It is strictly prohibited to use AI generated content directly in patent application documents. The patent application documents shall be manually written, drawn, edited, and organized by the applicant or their authorized patent agency based on real inventions, research results, and related materials.
2. It is strictly prohibited to use AI to generate research and development evidentiary materials, including but not limited to experimental data reports, technical research and development documents, scientific research achievement explanations, etc. The R&D certification materials should be generated by real R&D activities, objectively and accurately reflecting the R&D process and results, and have verifiability and traceability.
II、 Explanation of the consequences of violation
For those who violate the prohibition regulations, the relevant pre-trial cases will not be approved, and a “Pre-Examination Quality Notice” will be issued to the applicant and the agency.
For serious cases, according to the “Management Measures for Pre Examination Services of Filing Entities and Agency Institutions (2024)” (宁知保〔2024〕32号), the qualification for pre-examination services will be suspended for a certain period of time and included in the negative list of graded and classified management.
3. For particularly serious circumstances that clearly violate Article 20 of the Patent Law and Article 11 of the Implementing Regulations of the Patent Law, reports will be made to the administrative authorities at all levels, and corresponding administrative penalties will be recommended for the applicant and the agency in accordance with the law.
III、 Notification of verification measures
In the subsequent pre-examination review of cases, the Nanjing Intellectual Property Protection Center will use various methods to verify the application documents and research and development certification materials, including but not limited to: using professional text detection tools to analyze the originality of the content; organizing review experts to evaluate the rationality, logic, and professionalism of the documents; requiring the applicant to explain, clarify or provide further supporting materials for the key content in the document.
The original Notice is available here (Chinese only).