Guide: How to determine whether or not a claim comprising multiple technical solutions possesses inventiveness?

Introduction: Entrusted by a petitioner of request for invalidation, Linda Liu & Partners filed a request for invalidation of the invention patent named “method and system for adding information on communication information” (Patent No.: 200610033421.X). The Patent Reexamination Board of the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) examined the three parallel technical solutions of the disputed claim 1, and pointed out that: if the distinguishing features of the technical solution of a claim over the most related reference document were either disclosed in other reference documents or belonged to the common knowledge of the field, then it was readily apparent for a person skilled in the art to arrive at the technical solution of the claim by combining the above reference documents with the common knowledge, thus the claim did not possess inventiveness. Finally, the disputed invention patent was declared being wholly invalidated for the reasons that technical solutions 1 and 3 did not possess inventiveness over the combination of Evidence 1 and the common knowledge of the field, and technical solutions 2 did not possess inventiveness over the combination of Evidences 1 and 2 and the common knowledge of the field.

Highlight of the case:
Claim 1 of the disputed patent included three parallel technical solutions; we conducted in-depth search for each technical solution and provided three strong evidences. Finally, the Patent Reexamination Board supported our arguments. As shown above, the key to the success of this case lies in the acquisition of strong evidences for damaging patentability through the remarkable search skills together with in-depth search.