On April 25, the Supreme People’s published the Annual Report on IP Cases (2020) (Abstracts). The Report selected 55 typical IP cases that the Supreme People’s Court concluded in 2020 (affiliated cases with basically identical facts and legal issues are counted as one case), from which 63 issues concerning the application of law that incorporated values of guidance were summarized, reflecting the Supreme People’s Court’s thinking and adjudication methods in the trial of IP cases involving new types of rights, difficulties and complexities.

The “Patent-related Civil Cases” section of the Annual Report includes an invention patent infringement dispute that Watson & Band’s partner, Mr. Jianguo Huang, along with his team, represented for the patentee. The Supreme People’s Court commented on the guidance value of this case as follows:

How to identify the exceptions to functions features

In the invention patent infringement dispute between the retrial petitioner – a Japanese company, and the retrial respondents – a pneumatic equipment company in Yueqing and a hardware tooling company in Shanghai (File No.: (2019) SPC Civil Retrial No.5477), the Supreme People’s Court points out that based on the knowledge level and cognitive competence of an ordinary person skilled in the art prior to the filing date of the patent, if the specific embodiment that may realize the function or effect disclosed in the disputed technical feature belongs to common knowledge of an ordinary person skilled in the art, then said disputed technical feature should be identified as feature for which an ordinary person skilled in the art can directly and definitely determine the specific embodiment that may realize the function or effect disclosed therein, and therefore should not be identified as a functional feature.