December 2023 appears to have been an exceptionally busy and fruitful month in the China patent space. Following the State Council’s approval of the long-awaited Patent Law Implementation Regulations (“Regulations”, similar to the CFR in the US) in November, the CNIPA finally made public the full text of the Regulations just before the arrival of the New Year. At the same time, the CNIPA also released the new Patent Examination Guidelines (“Guidelines”, equivalent to the MPEP in the US), along with specific implementation dates and transitional methods. We will, over the coming period, undertake a detailed analysis and commentary on these amendments and their consequential impacts. Today’s article will focus…
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- China, China Patent Office, CNIPA, Court Cases, Courts, Invalidation, Inventions, Patent Law, Pharma, Top 10 IP Case
Do Promotional Marketing Materials Constitute an “Offer for Sale” under Chinese Patent Law? Bayer IP GmbH v. Nanjing Hang Seng Pharmaceutical
Bayer’s blockbuster drug Rivaroxaban has seen its share of patent litigations in China, several of which are big enough to be listed as Top 10 IP cases or 50 Representative IP cases. We summarized an invalidation case back in 2020 where all of Bayer’s claims directed towards the compound were upheld. Recently, another Rivaroxaban case made it onto China’s 50 Representative IP cases in 2022, this time in a final judgement from the Supreme Court of an infringement case against a generic company who was marketing the patented drug before the patent expiration date. At the heart of the case is a dispute over (1) what acts by a generic…
- 48 Typical Cases, Biotech, China, China Patent Office, CNIPA, Court Cases, Inventions, Judgement Digests, Patent Law, Pharma
Inventive Step for an Enantiomer over a Racemate: “L-ornidazole” Patent Invalidation Case
Each year, China’s Supreme People’s Court (SPC) issues its annual “Judgment Digests”, which includes a list of “48 typical cases” highlighting representative SPC decisions in the previous year. The Judgment Digests help us understand more about the SPC’s judicial ideology, trial concepts, and adjudication methods in dealing with difficult and sophisticated legal issues as well as new types of IP cases in high tech fields. Despite the fact that SPC judgments are not precedentially binding on lower courts, they are still very persuasive and provide insights into the types of decisions that are considered “model decisions” by the SPC. This case was one of the 48 “typical” cases and deals…
