Legal Insights: The patent in question had undergone seven prior invalidation requests, all of which remained valid. After Attorney Yu Chunbo intervened as the representative of the eighth invalidation requester, he successfully retrieved valid evidence and attended the oral hearing, ultimately leading to the patent’s complete invalidation.
Design patents protect the shape, pattern, or combination thereof, as well as the combination of color with shape and pattern, of a product, making it aesthetically pleasing and suitable for industrial application. In practice, many design patent applicants tend to protect the shape rather than the product’s pattern, color, or various combinations. Even regarding shape alone, it is difficult to find a completely identical design in prior patent literature. In fact, for design patents, unless it is a direct, unmodified copy, it is impossible to obtain a completely identical design.
In this respect, design patents are completely different from inventions and utility models. Newton and Leibniz were able to independently discover the Newton-Leibniz laws on opposite sides of the English Channel. When a technological solution is nearly mature, it is as common for two apples to fall from an apple tree at the same time in autumn. In the fields of invention and utility models, the emergence of independent, similar designs may be a result of the times. However, it’s difficult to imagine two masters independently creating two vases with identical shapes and patterns simply because they were made in the same era.
Therefore, for design patents, the most important evidence is disclosure evidence, not patent evidence. Disclosure evidence often stems from improper disclosure by the patentee before the application date. Once disclosure evidence is established, the pieces are essentially identical, making it difficult to refute the content. Disclosure evidence refers to methods that allow the public to know the technical content, such as manufacturing, use, sale, import, exchange, gifting, demonstration, exhibition, or bidding. As long as the relevant technical content was made available to the public through these methods before the target patent application date, it constitutes disclosure, regardless of whether the public actually knew about it.
Therefore, the focus of disputes regarding disclosure evidence is often whether the disclosure time and content are sufficient to prove the disclosure of the target patent. Regarding disclosure time, information published on government websites, industry association websites, large research institute websites, educational institution websites, and well-known commercial websites generally have high credibility, and the disclosure time can usually be established. The release time of some third-party platforms cannot be modified, and they can usually be reasonably trusted. The original source of the evidence in this case is video evidence from an overseas website. The credibility of the website is difficult to verify, but Attorney Yu Chunbo keenly found clues in the video and found clear photo evidence on the NetEase Chinese website.
For the use of public evidence, physical photos or videos are often used as carriers, and the six views of the product are not disclosed. However, based on the principle of “overall observation and comprehensive judgment”, for a certain type of product, the most concerned view has a significant impact on its overall visual effect, and the overall shape also has a significant impact on its overall visual effect. If, in the feature comparison, it can be seen that the overall shape of the target patent and the evidence are the same, and the design of the most concerned view is also completely the same, these similarities make the two have basically the same overall visual effect. And the view that is not easily noticed by ordinary consumers, even if it is not disclosed by the evidence, does not affect the fact that the design of the target patent is disclosed[5]. In other words, as long as physical photos that can reflect the design elements of the target patent are found, there is no need to worry too much about whether the photos reflect all the views. Of course, the photos need to be able to reflect the main design elements. For example, a clear frontal photograph of a person allows identification, but a photograph of only their back is insufficient for accurate confirmation.
Parties: Invalidation Requester (Client): AVIC Optoelectronic Technology Co., Ltd.
Patentee: Shenzhen Qiaoheli Technology Co., Ltd.
Basic Case Facts: AVIC Optoelectronic Technology Co., Ltd. filed an invalidation request against a patent held by Shenzhen Qiaoheli Technology Co., Ltd. The target patent had undergone seven invalidation challenges, with the requester failing in the first seven. Under these circumstances, the initiation of the eighth invalidation proceedings was particularly cautious. In the eighth invalidation attempt, Attorney Yu Chunbo, representing the requester, first retrieved crucial evidence in the evidence search, instilling confidence in the client. Subsequently, Attorney Yu Chunbo attended the oral invalidation hearing and ultimately succeeded, with the target patent declared entirely invalid.
Document Number: Invalidation Request Examination Decision No. 562496