Higher People's Court of Beijing promulgated the newly-revised "Guidelines for Decision of Patent Infringement" (Apr-2017)
On April 20, 2017, the Higher People's Court of Beijing held a press conference to formally promulgate the newly-revised "Guidelines for Decision of Patent Infringement".
The "Guidelines for Decision of Patent Infringement" consists of a total of 153 Articles and 21,000 characters and is divided into six sections, including establishment of the extent of protection and decision of infringement of right for invention patents and utility models in the patent litigation, establishment of the extent of protection and decision of infringement of right for designs, and recognition of acts amounting to infringement of right and defense for infringement of the patent right. Thus, systematic and complete provisions have been established for principles of interpreting the scope of claims, rules to determine a subject, methods and principles for determining infringement of right, recognition of acts amounting to infringement of right, and preparation of defense. Additionally, provisions have been established for the first time for issues attracting public attention such as standard essential patent (SEP) in judicial practices for patent in China and graphical user interface (GUI).
Main contents revised this time are as follows.
1. Principles and manners to interpret the scope of claims were further organized. Principles of interpretation consistent with the object of invention and manners of interpretation to distinguish the scope of claims were newly added. Provisions on the specific manners of interpretation for technical contents such as operating environment features and the title of the subject were added.
2. Interpretation of functional limitation features and rules to determine infringement of right were completely stipulated. Rules to determine equivalent infringement were further classified.
3. Based on the "interpretation (2) regarding some issues on application of the law in proceedings of dispute over patent infringement" rolled out by the Supreme People's Court, proceeding rules for design and joint infringement acts were further organized and classified.
4. Trial rules on new types of cases such as GUI design and standard essential patent (SEP) have been specified with reference to precedents in China and the latest precedents in other countries to a reasonable extent.
5. The extent of patent protection was expanded incrementally, and effective rules for acts amounting to indirect patent infringement were regulated based on judicial practices concerning computer software patents and communications patents in China.
6. For the mass emergence of low-quality patents, types of malicious intentions to obtain a patent right have been specified and guidelines for measures against acts of abuse of patent were provided.
According to the introduced contents, this revision of "Guidelines for Decision of Patent Infringement" was made to gradually enhance protection of patent right, determine proceeding rulings for new types of relevant cases, and specify basic principles such as the idea of proceedings in patent infringement cases. The promulgation of "Guidelines for Decision of Patent Infringement" not only contributes to further enhancement of predictability of patent trial rules but also provides effective support by judicial practices to new judicial interpretation of the revision of the Patent Law and establishment of the Supreme People's Court, thus leading to a creation of judicial environments preferable for implementation of development strategies driven by innovations.
(Sina.com, Sina, Information Center, revised version)