Patent Reexamination Board under the State Intellectual Property Office of China recently, with respect to our client's utility model patent invalidation case represented by our firm, issued the decision in favor of our client, declaring all claims of Utility Model Patent No. 03221169.4 invalid. Thus our client won this utility model patent invalidation case and all claims of this utility model patent are successfully invalidated.

Brief information about the case:

Our client is a world leader in textile air cargo restraint. A Chinese company sent warning letters to our client's customers to allege that our client infringed its utility model patent, which caused our client's customers confusion. When the client came to us for a solution, we suggested our client to file a request to the Patent Reexamination Board to declare this utility model patent invalid. In this utility model invalidation case, through detailed grounds in paper and arguments in hearing, we represented our client to provide persuasive arguments, strong evidences and technical statements. The Panel of the Board upon examination determined to declare all claims of Utility Model Patent No. 03221169.4 invalid. This utility model invalidation case took about half of a year.

Attorney's comments:

During the prosecution of a utility model patent application, the Patent Office will not examine the novelty and inventiveness. When a patentee of a utility model patent institutes a patent infringement suit, he or she should submit to the court an evaluation report made by the patent Office on the patentability of this patent, in order to let the court have a preliminary view for its patentability. In this case, the patentee did not file a patent infringement suit but directly sent the warning letters to our client's customers. Therefore, foreign clients should file patent and trademark applications first to seek protection of their IP rights. Where they missed the opportunity to do so, they should monitor the possible utility model and design patents related to their products in the market and file invalidation request as earlier as possible when necessary.