Recently, the Intellectual Property Court of the Supreme People's Court issued a final judgment in a patent invalidation administrative litigation appeal case represented by the patent team of NTD IP Attorneys (NTD). The judgment overturned the first-instance judgment of the Beijing Intellectual Property Court and the invalidation decision rendered by the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA).
The case involved a utility model patent related to automotive glass. Entrusted by the client, the NTD patent team filed an invalidation request with the CNIPA. The CNIPA subsequently issued a decision declaring the patent partially invalid. Challenging this invalidation decision, NTD initiated administrative litigation on behalf of the client.
The core dispute centered on the interpretation of the technical solution defined in the claims. Leveraging their profound understanding of the relevant technical field and precise interpretation of the invention concept of the patent at issue, the NTD patent team systematically demonstrated errors in the technical fact-finding and legal application within the invalidation decision. Their analysis spanned multiple aspects, including the background, objective, technical problem addressed, and technical effects achieved by the invention. The team argued that the invalidation decision had erroneously interpreted the claims as implicitly limiting the assembly sequence of the product's components, thereby unduly narrowing the claim's protection scope.
Ultimately, the NTD patent team successfully persuaded the appellate court to adopt its position. The court concluded that, for a person skilled in the art, the technical features of the relevant product defined by the claims maintained as valid showed no substantial structural or functional difference from the prior art, and the identification of the distinguishing technical features in the invalidation decision was incorrect. Accordingly, the Supreme People’s Court ordered the CNIPA to re-issue a decision based on re-identification of the distinguishing technical features.
This successful outcome fully demonstrates the professional capability and legal acumen of the NTD patent team in handling complex technology-related legal matters. Looking ahead, NTD will continue to leverage its professional strengths in the intellectual property field to provide even more specialized and efficient legal services for its domestic and international clients.
This case was represented by Gavin JIA and Ting ZHOU of NTD IP Attorneys.
Mr. Jia has more than 20 years of experience in intellectual property practice. He provides legal services in such areas as IP litigation, patent reexamination and invalidation, patentability and infringement assessment. He also counsels clients and provides legal services in all areas of intellectual property including IP due diligence，licensing, trade secret protection, copyright and dispute resolutions before administrative and judicial authorities.
Over the years, Mr. Jia has handled hundreds patent litigations before the local courts and the Supreme Court, invalidation actions before Patent Reexamination & Invalidation Department of CNIPA, with extensive experience in complex intellectual property dispute resolution. With particular expertise in handling tech-related legal matters, Mr. Jia has abundant experience in handling legal affairs related to equipment manufacturing, high-end medical equipment, artificial intelligence, automobile manufacturing, new materials and other technologies. Mr. Jia represented many well-known multinational and domestic corporations such as Johnson & Johnson, Intel, Bosch, Danone, Unilever, Volvo, Toshiba, Hitachi, Sumitomo, SAIC.
Mr. Jia was selected as one of the "High-Level Intellectual Property Personnel" by All-China Patent Attorneys Association in 2012, was selected as a Top 50 lawyer of National Outstanding Intellectual Property Lawyers in 2022, participated in the compilation of "Patent Agency in Patent Application Reexamination and Patent Invalidation", "Design Protection - Germany, EU, US, Japan, China and Korea's Laws and Practices" and other works in the field of intellectual property.
Ting ZHOU
Mr. Zhou joined NTD in 2014. He has handled a large number of foreign and domestic patent cases in the field of mechanical engineering, including patent drafting and prosecution, reexamination, invalidation, litigation, infringement analysis and design, for many famous multinational enterprises such as PSA Peugeot Citroën, Hitachi Energy, Saint-Gobain, etc. Mr. Zhou is fluent in French and English, and is also qualified as an attorney-at-law, which helps him to expertly combine language, technical background and legal thinking in his work.
