On the occasion of the 22nd World Intellectual Property Day (26 April 2022), the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) announced the top ten exemplary patent reexamination and invalidation cases of the year, which were selected from tens of thousands of cases of the type adjudicated by the CNIPA during year 2021. China Patent Agent (H.K.) Ltd. (CPA) is very glad to share that on the said top ten list was a winning case series of our firm in which we successfully defended the validity of a European client's patents.

 

In this case series, CPA's attorneys successfully protected the validity of two patents directed to Bedaquiline, a drug for the treatment of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis. The adjudication of the case series touched on several contentious points, including understanding of specific technical terms in the claims, admissibility of experimental data recited in patent specification, assessment of medical use invention's motivation to improve prior art in relation to reasonable expectation of success. In CNIPA's decision, our arguments were supported and our client's patent rights thus validated.

 

This case series has good guiding value in respect of the assessment standard for inventive step of medical use inventions. It underscores that objective evaluation of the invention's technological contribution should be made on the basis of the probative value of the experimental data recited in patent specification in ascertaining the technical effect at issue. Also, it points out that in obviousness assessment of medical use inventions, consideration should be given not only to whether a person skilled in the art, based on the prior art, is able to be motivated to apply the specific substance to treatment of relevant disease, but also to full analysis of whether there is reasonable expectation of success in the attempted technical solution.