This case is focused on polymorphs, namely what are the standards for novelty and inventiveness when it comes to new crystal forms of a known drug? A recent Supreme People’s Court decision in China is illustrative of the way Chinese courts are thinking about polymorph patents in China. Grünenthal is a German pharmaceutical company and inventor of the opioid painkiller Pentadol[1]. Grünenthal has a Chinese patent (ZL 200580021661.1) with claims directed towards a new crystalline form of particular phenol hydrochloride (“tapentastat hydrochloride” and “Form A” in claim 1), processes for preparing tapentastat hydrochloride (claim 3), and processes for preparing Form A (claims 16 and 23). Form A is made by…
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Stealing Trade Secrets: How the Chinese Court Criminally Sentences Employees that Steal Trade Secrets – 2019 China’s Top 50 Representative IP Cases
The theft of trade secrets has always been a deep concern of foreign companies thinking of doing business in China, whether it be sharing protocols with a manufacturing partner, providing technology details to a potential investor, or sharing results from an R&D collaboration. How can businesses ensure that employees do not steal secrets and share them with others, such as competitors? If such stealing occurs, what are the consequences? Recently, China chose to highlight this topic in one of its Top 50 Representative IP Cases. Hua Xing v. Lin, Ye, and Zheng (2018 粤13刑终361号) emphasizes the criminal nature of violating and misappropriating trade secrets and the possible consequences for those…
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Finally a unified “Court of Appeal” for technology IP in China
On October 26, 2018, China’s Supreme People’s Court (“SPC”) received approval to establish a specialized intellectual property court within the SPC to handle appeal cases involving technology-related IP for both civil (e.g., patent infringement) and administrative (e.g., patent invalidity) judgments. Technology-related IP includes invention patents, utility models, new plant species, IC design, trade secret, software, and anti-trust cases. [1] On December 28, 2018, the SPC announced the opening of this new SPC IP Court on January 1, 2019, and laid out some details surrounding how things would work [2]. We have summarized some of the details below. The SPC IP Court is based in Beijing and its judgments, rulings, mediations,…
