Recently, the Supreme People's Court of China ("the SPC") published the Summary of the Adjudication Principles of the Intellectual Property Court of the Supreme People's Court of China 2022 ("the Summary"), providing an outline of 75 adjudication principles derived from 61 typical cases, which were selected from 3,468 technology-related IP cases concluded by the Intellectual Property Court of the SPC (the IP Court) in 2022. The adjudication rules reflect the judicial concepts, reasoning of judgment and adjudication method adopted by the IP Court in handling technology-related IP and monopoly cases

 

Among the said typical cases from which the IP Court's adjudication principles of 2022 originated was an administrative dispute case handled by China Patent Agent (H.K.) Ltd. (CPA) on behalf of a European client. The trial of this case saw the reference to two important examination rules. One concerns the determination of whether a solution involving business method constitutes a technical solution in the sense of the Chinese patent law; and the other on the relationship between "determining as a whole" whether a patent application constitutes a technical solution and the "principle of wholeness" in the examination of inventive step.

 

Specific to this case, the technical features in the claims neither bring any technical changes to the internal performance, composition or function of the hardware components, nor do they contribute to any technical improvement of the production process involved. The aggregation of all the features in the claims generally embodies an artificial rule, which is not limited by the laws of nature, and therefore does not constitute a technical solution.