“Austenitic system stainless steel” patent transnational dispute

Why transnational disputes arise
Nippon Steel Corporation is the patentee of invention patent No. 03119950.X (referred to as the involved Patent 1) and invention patent No. 200880109889.X (referred to as the involved patent 2), entitled “Austenitic System Stainless Steel Pipe with excellent oxidation resistance to water steam and its manufacturing method thereof.” The two patents involved are mainly applied to the superheater or reheater parts of power generation boilers, and the technical solution aims to solve the technical problems that the Austenitic stainless steel pipe is easy to generate steam oxidation scale and flake off on its inner surface and crack the welding heat affected part under the high temperature environment for a long time.
Nippon Steel Co., LTD., Mannesmann Company, Sasquida Company are foreign enterprises, enjoy a certain reputation in the steel industry. Nippon Steel Corporation believes that Mannesmann and Saskeida’s promise to sell and sell the Austenitic system stainless steel with the brand DMV304HCu infringes its two patent rights, so it has filed two lawsuits, respectively requesting Mannesmann and Saskeida to stop the infringement. Jointly compensate the economic loss of the right holder of RMB 8 million and reasonable expenses of RMB 1 million. Mannesmann and Shaskeda filed counterclaims against the patents involved, claiming that Nippon Steel Corporation constituted a malicious lawsuit, and requested that Nippon Steel Corporation be ordered to stop the abuse of patent rights and compensate for losses of 930,574 yuan.
The court of first instance found that the infringement facts of the two cases were established, and ordered Mannesmann Company and Sasquida Company to stop the infringement, Sasquida Company to compensate for economic losses of 3 million yuan, and Mannesmann Company and Sasquida company to jointly compensate for reasonable expenses of 120,000 yuan. Shashquida Company refused to accept the first instance judgment of the two cases and appealed to the Supreme People’s Court.
Active performance of duties, high quality and efficiency “two in one” collaborative trial
The settlement of patent disputes in our country adopts the dual separation system of civil tort procedure and administrative invalidation procedure. On the one hand, the patent infringement procedure is often affected and restricted by the administrative invalidation procedure, and the cross-procedure is easy to prolong the period of safeguarding rights and the result is repeated. On the other hand, patentees tend to limit the scope of interpretation protection in patent invalidation proceedings to maintain the validity of rights, while in civil infringement proceedings they tend to expand the scope of interpretation protection to obtain infringement recognition, which easily leads to inconsistent interpretation of rights.
Therefore, these two patent infringement cases seem simple, but they are not, and how to deal with them needs to consider the results of the other three patent invalidation administrative cases involved in the same patent.
In the face of this situation, the Supreme Court of Intellectual Property gave full play to the “unified” role of the appeal hearing mechanism of intellectual property cases at the national level and the advantages of centralized jurisdiction, explored a set of effective “two-in-one” hearing mechanism of civil bank cooperation, and coordinated promotion of civil and administrative cases involving the same patent in the trial work. To realize the docking of the two major litigation procedures and judgment standards of right validity judgment and infringement judgment, and strive to solve the problems of long patent litigation cycle and inconsistent interpretation of claims by parties on the same patent in different cases from the mechanism level.
The intellectual Property Court of the Supreme Law does a good job of “front-end sorting” in the filing review stage, pays attention to identifying related cases with the same patent, and designates the same collegiate panel for trial as far as possible. In this way, the three cases of invention patent invalidation administrative disputes and the two cases of infringement of invention patent rights involved in the two patents were found in time and assigned to the same collegiate panel for trial. In doing so, it can not only avoid the problems caused by the above procedures, but also help coordinate the trial process and unify the case judgment standards.
On April 1, the collegial panel organized the parties to conduct pre-trial questioning of the two cases, and the parties submitted evidence and issued cross-examination opinions.
At 8 o ‘clock on April 24, stacks of thick files, half as tall as a person, were carried into the conference room by the clerks and placed neatly on the conference table. The judges and bench clerks sat together for a four-hour pre-court meeting on the five “Austenitic stainless steel” patent disputes.
In order to better ascertain the technical facts of the case, the collegiate panel invited Jiang Xianquan, professor of the School of Materials and Energy of Southwest University, to serve as the technical investigation officer of the five cases and participated in the pre-trial preparation meeting. The judges have asked the technical investigators for advice, and strive to understand the technical principles that are difficult to understand in the explanations of professional terms and instructions in the claims involved in the five cases in advance.
“What does sol. in sol.al mean in the patent specification?” “The same substrate, according to the patent specification to do the same composition control, can necessarily get the same effect?” “What is the difference between direct reading spectroscopy and fluorescence spectroscopy? How big is the error in detection accuracy?” … In the face of a series of questions thrown by the judge, the technical investigator explained one by one, showing his deep expertise in the field of materials.
For highly specialized technical intellectual property cases, a technical investigation system has been implemented, and professional technical investigators have been allowed to participate in the trial of cases, ensuring the quality of the trial of cases involving complex professional technical facts.
At 9 o ‘clock on April 26, with the crisp sound of the gavel, the trial officially began. Ma Yide, deputy to the National People’s Congress, Shang Wenjiang, member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, staff of the Patent Review and invalidation Department of the State Intellectual Property Office and representatives of graduate law students in some universities attended the trial.
During the trial, the collegial panel summarized the focus of the disputes in the two cases, mainly focusing on whether Shaskeda sold the accused infringing products in China, whether the accused infringing acts constituted an exception for scientific research experiments, whether the accused infringing products fell within the scope of protection of the patent rights involved, and whether the compensation liability determined by the first instance judgment was appropriate; The patent II case also dealt with the question of whether the prior art defense raised by Sarskida was valid and whether its counterclaim should be upheld.
The parties involved had a fierce confrontation around the focus of the dispute, you came and went, and each other did not give in. In the meantime, the appraiser testified in court to explain the specific problems of the test report such as the testing standards of Ti elements, and the parties repeatedly expounded their opinions on whether it is necessary to re-identify. The facts of the case are becoming clearer in the investigation and debate.
The trial lasted more than three hours, and the chief judge finally thanked the audience for their concern and support for the intellectual property trial cause, and said that the Supreme Court always adheres to the principle of equal protection, and will try every foreign-related case fairly in accordance with the law. After the trial, the chief judge called the judges and technical investigators non-stop to start a preliminary post-court discussion on the case, from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m., mainly in combination with the trial to discuss technical facts.
A simple calculation, from the four-hour pre-court preparation meeting on Wednesday, to more than nine hours of three administrative case trials on Thursday, to more than three hours of two civil case trials on Friday morning and three hours of preliminary post-court deliberations in the afternoon, five collegiate judges, one technical investigator, three judge assistants, and two clerks, in just three days, So much manpower and time investment, such a high intensity of the pace of work, in fact, is just a normal trial of the Supreme Court of Intellectual property. In each case, they are practicing “as I am in litigation”, so that the parties can finish their words, and they will be cautious, combining legal principles and emotions, and resolving disputes in essence…
Equal protection, create international intellectual property protection bright Chinese business card
From April 25 to 26, the Supreme Court Intellectual Property Court heard five cases of transnational disputes involving the patent of “Austenitic system stainless steel” in which the enterprise parties were all foreign subjects, respectively involving internationally renowned enterprises from Japan, Spain and Italy, across the Eurasian continent.
In recent years, more and more foreign companies have chosen to settle intellectual property disputes in Chinese courts. In the past five years since its establishment, the Supreme Court has upheld the concept of equal judicial protection for all types of parties and tried foreign-related intellectual property disputes in accordance with the law, forming a number of benchmarking judgments and exerting important influence at home and abroad. The number of new foreign-related cases received by the courts has increased by 28.6% annually, with more and more cases involving foreign subjects, and China has increasingly become one of the preferred places for international intellectual property litigation. The Supreme People’s Court held a special press conference at The State Council Information Office in February this year, during which it released ten influential cases and 100 typical cases on the fifth anniversary of the establishment of the intellectual Property Court, 21 of which were foreign-related cases.
“On World Intellectual Property Day, the trial of three foreign companies before the Supreme Court of Intellectual Property is of great significance. The collegial panel conducted the trial patiently and carefully, fully listened to the opinions of all parties, protected the litigation rights of the parties, demonstrated the professional quality of China’s intellectual property judges, and set a good example for creating a good business environment. Especially touching is that Vice President Zhonglin shook hands with the six agents after the trial, revealing the people’s court’s respect for the agents and the awareness of building a legal professional community.” Ma Yide shared his experience after the court hearing.
Shang Wenjiang commented after the court: “Through the 3 and a half hours of audit, I fully felt the skillful control ability of the chief judge of the case and the professional grasp ability of the members of the collegial panel, felt the difficulty of technical intellectual property trial work and the complexity of transnational disputes, and also experienced the way of intellectual property case trial to serve economic development.” The Supreme Court of Intellectual Property pays attention to judicial transparency and friendly procedures, continuously improves the convenience of litigation, demonstrates judicial integrity and responsibility, and contributes experience and wisdom to the judicial protection of intellectual property in the world.”