On April 11, 2025, China’s National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) issued the Business Reminder on Further Standardizing the Requirements for Drafting Patent Application Documents (关于进一步规范专利申请文件撰写要求的业务提醒). The Reminder states that the background section of the specification specifically should not introduce political content not directly related to the technology and only use official maps from China’s Ministry of Natural Resources “to ensure accuracy, legality and authority of the map.” However, this represents difficulties for foreign applicants as the Ministry’s map website appears to be unavailable for foreigners.

A full translation follows. The original text can be found here (Chinese only).

In order to further improve the standardization of patent application documents and save the application and authorization procedures, the following reminders are made for the writing of patent application documents in accordance with the relevant provisions of the “Patent Examination Guidelines”:
1. The core of the patent application document is the technical solution it records, and the introduction of content unrelated to the technical solution should be avoided as much as possible, especially the background technology and drawings of the specification.
2. The background technology part of the specification should state the background technology and corresponding documents that are useful for understanding, searching, and reviewing the invention or utility model. When explaining the problems and shortcomings in the background technology, it should focus on the technical content and try to avoid introducing political, economic, cultural and other information that is not directly related to the technology.
3. For the drawings of the specification, it is recommended to introduce maps only when they are closely related to the scope of protection. When it is necessary to introduce, the applicant should use standard maps, such as those obtained through the “Standard Map Service System” (http://bzdt.ch.mnr.gov.cn/ ) on the website of the Ministry of Natural Resources to ensure the accuracy, legality and authority of the map. When making drawings based on standard maps, relevant laws, regulations and departmental regulations should be observed.