Supreme Court published on January 29 the amended Regulations on Several Issues concerning Application of Law in Hearing Patent Dispute Cases (hereinafter referred to as the Regulations), which had been approved by the 1641st conference of the Judicial Committee of the Supreme People's Court on January 19 and came into force from February 1, 2015.

The amendments of the Regulations include two aspects, one is adjustment based on changes of sequence numbers of articles and expressions in the Patent Law amended in 2008, the other is the revision of regulations on appraisal reports of patent rights and calculation of amount of compensation to keep it in consistency with the existing Patent Law and its Judicial Interpretation.

Compared with the previous Patent Law, the existing Patent Law added the act of offering for sale as one of the infringing acts against design right; therefore, the Regulations added the content of the place of offering for sale of the alleged infringing design product in articles concerning the place where an infringing act is committed.

It is said that the 2009 Judicial Interpretation on the Patent Law adopted a principle of complete coverage in determining patent infringement, that is to say, all the technical features recorded in the claims of a patentee are required to be examined, and there is no longer need to determine which technique feature is essential, which means the concept of “essential technical feature” no longer exists. Therefore, the Regulations revised articles concerning the determination of scope of protection of patent rights, and amended “essential technical features explicitly recorded in the claims” in original articles to “all technical features recorded in the claims”, and “the essential technical feature” to “the technical feature”.

The existing Patent Law amended the amount of legal compensation for patent infringement; to reflect such amendment, article “under normal circumstances, the amount of compensation shall be determined between 5,000 to 300,000 yuan, while the maximum compensation shall not exceed 500,000 yuan” in the original Regulations is deleted and “the amount of compensation shall be determined in accordance with Article 15 (2) of the Patent Law based on the type of patent right and the nature and circumstance of the infringement act” is introduced.

The existing Patent Law replaced the “search report” in the previous Patent Law with “appraisal report of patent right”, and added “design” into the patent types that may be submitted in the report. Therefore, the Regulations amended the expressions in the original Regulations which only required to submit search report regarding utility models, and explained explicitly that where a patent-infringement lawsuit is filed against a patent for utility model with filing date earlier than October 1, 2009, the plaintiff may submit the search report; where such lawsuit is filed against a patent for utility model with filing date later than October 1, 2009, the plaintiff may submit the appraisal report of patent right. The Regulations also explained clearly the legal consequences where the plaintiff does not submit such report.

Date: February 2, 2015        Source: People's Court Daily