Patenting in China

The concept of “usage environment feature” was first introduced by the Supreme People’s Court in a patent infringement dispute between Shimano INC. and Ningbo Sunrun Industry & Trade Co., Ltd. on 2012. In the judgment of the Court, “Usage environment feature” was defined as “a technical feature for the purpose of describing the backgrounds or conditions under which an Inventions-Creation is applied in a claim.” In addition, the concept was later incorporated into the Article 9 of the Interpretation of
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During the substantive examination of invention patents in China, the claimed invention may receive an Obviousness rejection. In other words, the invention may be regarded that it does not involve an inventive step by the examiner because it is obvious as compared with the prior art. When the technical solution of the claim is commented as “obvious” by the examiner, the claimed invention lacks inventiveness. As indicated below, the paragraph often appears in the office action. “Therefore, those technical solutions
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