最高人民法院知识产权法庭年度报告（2019）(14)

　　(vi) The direction for increasing the judicial protection is clear. A good-faith litigation mechanism is adopted and in the event of refusal to perform an order on presenting documents, intentional damage to the product in preservation, etc., a presumption of fact against the actor is taken. Among the cases concluded, cases supporting the obligee’s claims according to law, account for 61.2%.

　　② Characteristics of civil patent cases

　　The civil patent cases heard by the IP Court have the following characteristics:

　　(i) There are many cases where claim construction and the determination of equivalent infringement are the main disputes. Since claim construction is related to the determination of the scope of protection of patent rights and the result of comparing infringing technologies, through the judgment in individual case, the IP Court conducts in-depth exploration of the identification criteria of functional features, the limitation of subject names on the protection scope of the claims, and the application of the dedication doctrine. As there are many cases involving the judgment of equivalent infringement, how to maintain the publicity function of patent claims while granting fair protection to patent holders becomes the main difficulty in hearing such cases.

　　(ii) The legitimate source defense, the prior art defense, and the preemption defense are the most common defenses. Cases where the legitimate source defenses are proposed, account for the largest proportion, and most of the disputes focus on the distribution of burden of proof and the scope of exemption from liability for damages. The prior art defense is relatively arbitrary, and parties who file or present the prior art defense for the first time during the second-instance procedure, account for a large proportion.

　　(iii) Related cases with commercial rights protection account for a certain proportion. In such cases, the obligee carries out large-scale and centralized commercial rights protection across the country with the same patent. Most of the patents involved are utility model patents that have not been substantively examined, and most of the alleged infringers are small downstream vendors in the goods supply chain.

　　③ Characteristics of administrative cases concerning patents

　　The administrative cases concerning patents heard by the IP Court have the following characteristics:

　　(i) There are many cases involving invention patents and high-tech fields. Among the three types of patents, invention patents are the most technical, and invention patent cases rank first among declaration of invalidity cases and reexamination cases, reflecting the importance attached to patent value by inventors and the relevant public. In terms of the technical field, most number of cases involves the mechanical field, but among declaration of invalidity cases, cases in the electrical field and the mechanical field account for the most number. There are also many disputes in high-tech fields such as telecommunication technology and computers. Although the total number of declaration of invalidity cases is small in the chemical field, they are generally concentrated in important industries such as pharmaceuticals and biotechnology.

　　(ii) Judgment of inventiveness is the main dispute in most cases. There were a total of 92 cases involving inventiveness judgment, accounting for about 70% of patent administrative cases, and among the cases where the judgment of the first instance was reversed, 80% involve examination of inventiveness. In the trial of such cases, the IP Court judges attach importance to determination of non-obviousness by using the “three-step approach”, standardize auxiliary considering factors such as  commercial success, and explore judgment of inventiveness concerning compound medicines in new crystalline form, preserved biomaterials, etc., so as to ensure that truly valuable inventions are protected according to law.

　　(iii) Among the cases sent back for retrial, many cases have natural persons as the applicants. Of the 57 reexamination cases, 75% of the cases have natural persons as the applicants. Most of them were dismissed due to lacking of inventiveness, and a few lacking of either practical applicability or patent subject matter eligibility. The applicants were natural persons in 10 cases where the cases were not accepted due to a misunderstanding of the calculation method for the time limit of litigation filing in patent administrative litigation.

　　④Characteristics of cases concerning computer software

　　Cases concerning computer software heard by the IP Court have the following characteristics:

　　(i) The types of the cases are relatively concentrated. There are mainly two types of software cases: contract cases and infringement cases and the former accounts for over 80% of its total number.