On April 30, 2025, China’s National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) released a draft amendment for comment of the Patent Examination Guidelines. One of the main proposed changes is the addition of a section tightening examination standards for video codec patent applications. CNIPA explained, in part, that the purpose of the addition was to “provide the right holder with the option of claiming rights to one of the links” (e.g., generation, storage and transmission of bitstreams) and prevent the “right holder from claiming rights to multiple links of the streaming industry and obtain licensing income that is disproportionate to their technical contributions.”   Comments are due June 15, 2025.