Recently, Liu Shen secured a comprehensive victory in representing a domestic medical device company in defending a series of patent infringement litigations.

The cases involved a new type of medical device. As the first domestic enterprise to industrialize the innovative device and launch multi-center clinical trials, the client faced patent infringement allegations during the clinical trial phase. To protect its legitimate rights and interests, the company entrusted Liu Shen to act as its legal counsel in the proceedings.

Upon engagement, Liu Shen promptly set up a legal team with extensive professional experience. Given the high technical complexity of the cases, covering equipment structure, electrical signal control, disease treatment and other specialized fields, the team formulated a comprehensive defense strategy. Liu Shen immediately initiated patent invalidation proceedings against the asserted patents. Through technical decomposition of the patented solution, exhaustive retrieval of reference documents, and well-designed grounds for invalidation, the team compelled the patentee to adopt a narrowed interpretation of the patent claims during the invalidation procedure. Meanwhile, the Liu Shen team conducted a meticulous review of the evidence submitted in the infringement litigations, identifying material doubts and deficiencies in the opposing party’s evidence. The team thoroughly analyzed the litigation background as well as the nature and connotation of the alleged infringing acts, maintained full communication with the client, and developed a well-grounded non-infringement defense strategy. Taking into account that the accused products were still in the clinical trial stage, the team successfully invoked the Bolar exception as a key defense argument.

The first-instance court adopted Liu Shen’s defense arguments and dismissed all claims filed by the plaintiff. During the second-instance proceedings, the asserted patents were fully invalidated by the China National Intellectual Property Administration. The Supreme People’s Court subsequently ruled to dismiss the opposing party’s claims. Liu Shen thus secured a complete victory for the client in both the patent infringement litigations and parallel invalidation proceedings.

This series of cases demonstrates Liu Shen’s outstanding capability in handling technically complex patent disputes. Always acting in the best interests of clients, the team flexibly formulated tactical solutions to fully safeguard the client’s commercial and legal interests.

Lead Attorneys for the Case Series: Stephen ZOU, YU Xiaoning, HU Qi, ZHU Wenjing, ZHANG Shubei, QI Le.