Beijing Intellectual Property Court Patent Litigation Increases -Technology Investigator assists investigation
For those highly competitive in industrial market countries, comparing to America and Germany, China litigation procedure is easier and efficient (average less than half year), litigation cost is lower (500 thousand to 1 million CNY), and evidence is who advocates who proves (same as Germany). Therefore, patent litigation in Beijing Intellectual Property Court is increasing. However, the technology fields of patent litigation are various. The key point to improve adjudgement quality is resolving technical barriers. Hence, Beijing Intellectual Property Court established investigator system to assist judge to accurate understanding and identification of technical problems. Those investigators came from enterprises, universities, institutes, national patent authorities, and patent agent associations.
In patent litigation case of IWNCOMM vs. Sony, the investigator played a key role to find out the facts. IWNCOMM is a WAPI (Wireless LAN Authentication and Privacy Infrastructure) standard promoter that applied lots patents in WAPI field. IWNCOMM had tried to negotiate with Sony for standard patent licensing since 2009, but always been denied. In 2015, IWNCOMM sued Sony, and requested court forcing Sony stops produce and sell involved products and pays compensation. Judge adjudged IWNCOMM won the litigation following judgment points* such as whether standard patent or not would not change constituent elements of patent infringement, and simple method patent does not have patent exhaustion problem under current China patent Act on 2017/3/20, and adjudged Sony has to pay CNY$9,100,000 compensation.
According to Beijing Intellectual Property Court website introduction, this kind of patent litigation case is increasing and its fields include communication, medical treatment, and chips. As of 2017/2/28, Beijing Intellectual Property Court has accepted 3693 patent litigation cases which are 16.8% of all litigation cases that shows more and more enterprises file patent litigations due to China has patent litigation advantages and huge market. In the future, besides America and Germany, China is going to be a main battlefield.
*For complete judgments points please refer to reference 3.
Reference:
1.北京知识产权法院：专利侵权平均判赔额达138万元
http://www.ccpit.org/Contents/Channel_3586/2017/0328/779705/content_779705.htm
2.索尼中国一审被判手机专利侵权，判赔 910 万元
http://cn.technode.com/post/2017-03-22/sony-4/
3.西電捷通公司訴索尼中國公司侵害發明專利權糾紛一案判決書
http://www.ciplawyer.hk/article.asp?articleid=21507
4.【中國大陸專利無效訴訟實務發展與台商應對之道】研討會
Writer: Project Specialist Candice Liao