World's first Chinese Herbal Medicines Patent Examination Standards to be promulgated

　"Chinese Herbal Medicines Patent Examination Standards", which has long been looked forward to by the practitioners of Chinese medicine and herbs, is expected to be promulgated and enforced soon.  Though the draft Examination Standards are the first of its kind, its principles are concluded from approved patent applications for Chinese herbal medicines in Mainland China, Euro-American countries and Japan. 

　According to the draft bill, the so-called "Chinese herbal medicines" include plants, animals, minerals, algae and fungus, used in their natural forms, or synthesized or extracted.  The examination standards on "ingredients" and "curative effect", where tend to cause more problems, are prescribed in correspondence with the characters of Chinese herbal medicines.  In terms of the ingredients, a Chinese herbal medicine invention needs not to have clear a chemical formula. The applicant can choose to identify the main or index ingredients of such medicine with a finger print; or depict the medicine at issue by its physical or chemical properties; or specify the medicine at issue by the so-called "product-by-process" method, which requires the applicant to disclose the constituent herbs, the proportions and the processing procedures thereof. 

　To prove the curative effect, the applicant may use the mothod of "bian zheng lun zhi" (i.e., planning treatment according to the differentiation of syndromes) unique to traditional Chinese medical science, in addition to cell, animal and human-based testing that are commonly used by western medicines.