According to Article 25 of Chinese Patent Law, no patent right shall be granted for rules and methods for mental activities. In particular, if a claim concerns only rules and methods for mental activities, it shall not be granted a patent right. Examples include methods and system of managing organization, production, commercial activities or economy, etc.

Example technical solution: a method of monitoring purchase history of a costumer and recommending purchasing products according to their previous purchases to meet the costumer's requirement.

The solution as described above falls in the range of unpatentable subject matters as described by Article 25 of Chinese Patent Law, since the solution as described is a method for "mental activities", in particular, commercial activities. A claim written in a similar way may not be allowed.

However, it is not definite that a patent cannot be granted for an invention application with the above technical solution. The technical solution may be "packaged" into different form. The claims may be written in the form of, for example, devices performing technical methods, such that the claims contain not only matter of rules or methods for mental activities, but also technical features. Then, the solution in the claims viewed as a whole is not a rule or method for mental activities, and shall not be excluded from patentability under Article 25.

As to the example above, we may extract technical features from the solution in the invention, and the claims shall contain these technical features. For example, the method in the invention may comprise acquiring data from a costumer's user device or data base (smart phone or a server, for example), performing specific data processing on a data processing device or a server and provide response data back to the user device. In such a manner, we turn the claim to focus on the data processing other than the commercial activities being merely a method for mental activities, and the clams will contain technical features. Such subject matter shall not be considered as unpatentable under Article 25 of Chinese Patent Law.

In general, technical features shall be contained in the claims, and the so called commercial activities may be packaged into patentable subject matter, by incorporated with such technical features.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.