51. Regarding undisclosed information, he said that Article 51 of the Administrative Rules on Drug Registration provided that, while the new drug was being examined, the technical requirements for it would not be lowered because it had already been on sale in overseas markets. SFDA, the Chinese Food and Drug Agency, had established a stringent confidentiality preserving system to prevent information submitted by the applicant from being disclosed. Reviewers had to register when consulting any document and access for each reviewer was restricted to documents within his/her job duty. So far no leakage of submitted information by the staff of SFDA had been found and no complaint in this regard had been received from any applicant. He invited drug patent owners to log on to SFDA's website (www.sfda.gov.cn) to check whether the drug had been applied for by other parties. The regular SFDA procedure on patent disputes was that a patent owner would submit a request to the SFDA. SFDA would then notify other applicants asking them to explain within 40 days whether they had infringed that patent, otherwise their application would be refused.
52. Regarding the cancellation of trade names similar to well-known trademarks, he said that at present, the Implementation Rules of Trademark Law, the Regulations on Registration of Enterprise Names and the Regulations on Affirmation and Protection of Well-known Trademarks could be applied to this matter.
53. He said that such laws as Counter Unfair Competition Law and Product Quality Law could be applied to the protection of indications of source. As to the amendment of the Counter Unfair Competition Law, he said this process had started in 1997 and had been added to the legislation plan by the Standing Committee of the People's Congress in 2003. The National Administration of Industry and Commerce was responsible for drafting the amendment which was currently in the public consultation process.
