Recently, the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) issued its decision in a patent invalidation case represented by Liu Shen, holding the asserted invention patent entirely invalid. This ruling marks a vital procedural victory for our client in defending against the associated patent infringement proceedings.
Our client is a long standing player engaged in the R&D, manufacturing and industrial deployment of vacuum technologies and related equipment. It has broken the long standing market monopoly held by foreign competitors and achieved a landmark domestic breakthrough for this category of equipment. The patent in suit is owned by an internationally renowned vacuum equipment manufacturer, which previously initiated patent infringement litigation alleging that our client’s dry vacuum pump products infringed its asserted invention patent.
Dry vacuum pumps are widely deployed across semiconductors, integrated circuits, photovoltaics, new material industries and scientific research instrumentation. These products feature highly sophisticated technical architectures encompassing multiple core technologies including rotor profile design, pump chamber configuration, gas conveyance and sealing control mechanisms.
Upon retention, Liu Shen assembled a cross functional team of lawyers and patent attorneys with hands on expertise in fluid machinery and vacuum pump technologies. Technical assessment confirmed that our client’s independently developed structures adopt a fundamentally different inventive concept to address the same technical challenges as the patent in question. The patent’s claims, however, were drafted with an overly broad scope that failed to articulate how its inventive concept distinguishes from prior art disclosures.
Accordingly, the Liu Shen team conducted multiple rounds of prior art searches. Having precisely pinpointed the substance of the patented technical solution, we built a comprehensive, tightly knit framework of invalidation grounds and supporting evidence aligned with statutory patentability requirements to challenge the patent’s validity. During the matter, both parties withdrew their respective infringement claims and invalidation petitions amid settlement negotiations. Undeterred, the Liu Shen team carried out targeted supplementary prior art searches in response to arguments advanced by the patentee during the oral hearing. This further refined our invalidation arguments and evidentiary foundation, equipping our client to robustly defend against the patentee’s subsequent round of infringement litigation.
Following examination, CNIPA adopted the invalidation grounds submitted by our team and ruled that the subject matter invention patent be fully invalidated. This removes the patent related barrier impeding our client’s business operations, materially mitigates legal risks arising out of the infringement dispute, and lays a solid foundation for further handling of related proceedings.
The case was handled by QIU Jun, WANG Xiao, WANG Ran, LIU Weiran and XUE Yunran.
