Revised Draft Standardization Law Released

On May 16, NPC released the Standardization Law (Revision Draft for comments) with a deadline of Jun. 14, 2017. USITO submitted comments when it was released for comments by the State Council last year. The updated Revision Draft released by NPC includes minor changes to the framework of the previous draft, our concern over the adoption of international standards, IPR issues, the application of enterprise standards and social standards remains. However, some of our concerns expressed in our previous comments to the State Council were addressed.

Some positive changes include that they clarified the definitions of social and enterprise standards and removed article 28 which stated that the government could use mandatory or recommended standards to control markets and market access. Some issues still exist, including releasing standards to the public for free. Industry is concerned that by releasing this information for free they could be exposing IP they don't want shared with general public.