On October 15, 2014, Rule 14 of the Provisions of the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) on Several Issues concerning the Trial of Administrative Cases Involving the Granting and Determination of Trademark Right (Draft for Comment) was released by the SPC with two different opinions regarding the weight of evidence of trademark registration certificate and trademark gazette in determining copyright ownership. The first opinion provides that, “trademark gazette, trademark registration certificate, etc. may serve as prima facie evidence to ascertain the copyright owner or the interested party thereof. Where the applicant of the disputed trademark opposes, that applicant has the burden to provide counter evidence to support his opposition.”

According to Article 61, Paragraph 1 of the Chinese Patent Law (2009), a patentee may choose to shift its burden of proof for infringing process to the defendant when the patented process is for obtaining new product. However, to take use of such convenience, the patentee has to satisfy some preconditions. This case illustrates that the patentee have to submit preliminary evidence regarding “new product.” Based on this case, this article will discuss all the preconditions for application of Article 61, Paragraph 1 with an overview.

The patentee Manfred A. A. Lupke (hereinafter referred to as “Lupke”) owning an invention patent No. ZL95192937.2 brought a lawsuit before the Tianjin Intermediate People’s Court against Weifang Zhongyun Machine Co.,Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Zhongyun Machine”) as the producer of a corrugated pipe manufacturing equipment, and Tianjin Shengxiang Plastic Pipe Industry Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Shengxiang Industry”) as the user of the equipments, alleging that the corrugated pipe manufacturing equipment produced by Zhongyun Machine has infringed the patent.

The latter half of Article 32 of the Chinese Trademark Law 2013 (Article 31 of the Chinese Trademark Law 2001) stipulates that“ preemptive registration by unfair means of a trademark with certain fame already used by another party” shall not be approved (“Bad Faith Filing Provision”). From the literal understanding of such provision, the fame of the trademark with prior use and the bad faith of the applicant of the disputed trademark are two requirements for application of law for the Bad Faith Filing Provision.

A method patent is different from a product patent in that it protects a dynamic operation process. How to compare between the method used by the defendant and the patented process is a key point when the court tries an infringement case involving a process patent. In this case, by finding the technical feature difference of the products, the court held that the two processes are neither identical nor equivalent and thus the defendant does not infringe upon the plaintiff’s patent. This shows a new way for judging infringement upon a process patent.

The Interpretation of the Supreme People’s Court on Several Issues concerning the Application of Law in the Trial of Patent Infringement Dispute Cases stipulates, in Rule 6, “where the applicant or patent right owner abandons a technical solution through amendments to the claims and/or specification or observations during the prosecution of the application or the invalidation proceedings of the patent, the court shall not support the right owner’s claim of reclaiming the abandoned technical solution back into the protection scope in the infringement litigation case.” Therefore, application of the DOE is premised with a condition that the right owner has abandoned the technical solution through amendments or observations during the patent prosecution or invalidation proceedings.

An equivalent feature is a feature that, as compared to the feature described in a claim, performs substantially the same function by substantially the same means, produces substantially the same effect, and can be associated by an ordinary person skilled in the art without any inventive work. While determining whether a prosecuted product falls within equivalent infringement, the means, function, effect, and inventive work should be determined in the above order. Only when all four elements of a feature meet the above conditions, the feature can be determined as an equivalent feature.

When determining whether an infringement is established by employing the equivalent doctrine, it is necessary to compare technical features of an involved patent with those of an alleged infringing product, so division of technical features will influence determination of an equivalent feature. In this case, the Supreme People’s Court suggests that for division of technical features of a claim, a technical unit that is able to implement a relatively independent technical function generally should be considered as one technical feature, and it should not designate multiple technical units that implement different technical functions as one technical feature.

The case relates to an infringement dispute between Patentee, Wanqing BAI, and Chengdu Nanxun Marketing Service Center (hereinafter referred to as “Nanxun Center”), Shanghai Tianxiang Industry Co.,Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Tianxiang Industry”).

The patentee, Zhaoqing New Leader Battery Industry Co.,Ltd. et.al.(“New Leader Battery” hereinafter), has a utility model patent No. ZL01234722.1 titled “Mercury-free Alkaline Button Cell Battery.” The involved patent underwent three rounds of invalidation after the date of authorization proclamation. Finally, the Patent Reexamination Board (the “PRB” hereinafter) made the No. 13560 decision on the request for invalidation (hereinafter referred to as the invalidation decision) on June 9, 2008 declaring that all claims of the involved patent are invalidated. In the subsequent administrative litigation, both the court of first instance and second instance judged that the invalidation decision should be reversed.