Background

    The owner of the patent numbered 01140246.6 sued Chongqing Chengtou Jinka and several other firms for patent infringement in February 2013, alleging that products of the defendants had violated its patent, named "the electronic intelligent integrated management system and method for motor vehicles", seeking a record high compensation of over CNY60 million. In May of the same year, the defendants filed an application with the Patent Reexamination Board for invalidation of the patent in question.

Process

    There were some difficulties in researching reference documents given that the application date of the patent in question was earlier. To ensure a successful invalidation of the patent in question, attorneys from Kangxin researched not only the Chinese patent databases, but also patent databases in Europe, the U.S. and Japan, with several reference documents made available. They also researched databases of papers, and found articles that could overthrow the creativity of the patent in question. They eventually adopted more than 20 pieces of evidence, and used one or more of them as different combinations of evidence. A dozen such evidence combinations were used to evaluate the creativity, and several of such evidence combinations were almost the same as the technology adopted for the patent in question. In addition, due to a wide use of evidence combinations, everyone could be persuaded to believe that the patent in question was very close to the existing technologies. By using such a strategy, we successfully managed to have the patent in question declared invalid.

Results

    In its No. 21469 Decision, the Patent Reexamination Board announced that the patent in question was invalid as a whole. The owner did not file administrative proceedings within the limitation of actions, and withdrew the suit. It is the first patent dispute case in the field of Internet of Vehicles in China, being identified as the "prelude to a patent battle in relation to Internet of Vehicles". As it is common to see patents in Internet of Vehicles typically featuring a combination of software and hardware, the decision on the case has guiding significance for the uniform enforcement of the standards for the examination of relevant cases in the field of Internet of Vehicles or even the Internet of Things in the future. The case was selected as one of the major cases of the Patent Reexamination Board in 2013 given that it involved a high amount and attracted wide attention from the industry.