On the occasion of the 26th World Intellectual Property Day, the intellectual property services of Lifang Law Firm have once again been recognized, with four cases selected as typical intellectual property cases of the Supreme People's Court.

Case 1: Malicious lawsuit involving an invention patent for “display substrates”

This case was selected for inclusion in the “Abstract of Key Adjudication Holdings of the IP Tribunal of the Supreme People's Court (2025)”.

Representation team: Haidong Yu, Zhongtao Liu, Runzhi Wu

This case involves multiple technical and legal points of contention. One of the legal focal points lies in whether the acceptance and substantive adjudication of a dispute over liability for damages arising from the malicious initiation of IP litigation must necessarily be predicated upon the prior intellectual property case alleged to constitute malicious litigation having been concluded and come into legal effect. With respect to this focal issue, the Supreme People's Court made the following determination: as a general rule, the handling of disputes over liability for damages arising from the malicious initiation of IP litigation requires waiting until the prior intellectual property case, which the plaintiff claims constitutes malicious litigation, has been concluded and become legally effective. However, as disputes over liability for damages arising from the malicious initiation of IP litigation are, in nature, infringement actions, the acceptance and substantive adjudication of such cases are not necessarily contingent upon the prior intellectual property case having been concluded and come into legal effect.

Around the above focal point, the attorneys of our firm fully argued the following position: this case is independent of the prior patent infringement litigation and possesses independent justiciability in procedural terms. Ultimately, the presiding judge of the IP Tribunal of the Supreme People's Court fully heard and carefully considered the opinions of both parties on this disputed focal point. Upon prudent analysis, the collegial panel adopted the above legal opinion advanced by our firm’s attorneys, namely, that, procedurally, the conclusion and entry into legal effect of the prior intellectual property case shall not be made a necessary precondition for the acceptance and adjudication of disputes over liability for damages arising from the malicious initiation of IP litigation. This adjudicative view not only has direct significance for the application of law in the present case, but also provides a judicial reasoning path of guiding value for the handling of similar cases in the future, further clarifies the procedural relationship between actions for damages arising from malicious litigation and prior intellectual property cases, and embodies the Supreme People's Court’s nuanced balancing of safeguarding the right to bring a suit, preventing abuse of procedure, and maintaining judicial efficiency.

Case 2: Engineered Schizochytrium cell strain and its construction methods and applications

This case was selected for inclusion in the “Annual Report (2025) on Issues Concerning Application of Laws in Intellectual Property Cases by National level Courts”.

Representation team: Li Wu, Rui Wang, Qi Sun

In this case, the second-instance judgment of the Supreme People's Court explicitly held that, for engineered microbial strains obtained by means of gene overexpression, if their synthesized products have a clear correlation with existing known strains or processes, can demonstrate the implementability of the technical solution, and if persons skilled in the art can confirm the feasibility of repeated preparation of such engineered strain and foresee its technical effects, then the specification has satisfied the requirement of sufficient disclosure. This adjudication rule fills an important gap in the determination of sufficient disclosure in specifications of microbial genetic engineering patents and has positive exemplary value for patent protection in frontier fields such as gene editing and synthetic biology.

This case involves the field of engineered microbial strains and focuses on “sufficient disclosure in specification”, a core requirement for patent grant, squarely addressing the technical pain points in the field of microbial patents. The representation work in this case spans both technical and legal dimensions, entailing high difficulty and a substantial workload. The Lifang team conducted in-depth research into gene overexpression mechanisms, plasmid construction logic, microbial strain depository systems, and the principles of conservativeness in metabolic pathways, transforming complex molecular biology facts into clear legal arguments, rigorously organizing every technical detail and demonstrating the process of constructing engineered microbial strains, thereby providing a critical breakthrough point in argumentation for this case. The case went through invalidation proceedings and both first-instance and second-instance administrative litigation. In the end, by judgment of the IP Tribunal of the Supreme People's Court, the appeal was dismissed and the patent right was maintained as valid. This judgment not only safeguarded the client’s core intellectual property rights, but also established an important benchmark for patent protection in the field of microbial genetic engineering.

Case 3: NUM Co., Ltd. v. a grinding machine company in Anhui and a precision tool technology company regarding a dispute over infringement of computer software copyright

This case was selected as a “Typical Case of Mediation Work of the IP Tribunal of the Supreme People's Court in 2025”.

Representation team: Bin Zhang, Lei Zhang, Zhimin Gong

NUM Co., Ltd. of Switzerland is a technological leader in the field of numerical control machine tools and one of the global professional providers of computer numerical control (CNC) systems. The NUMROTO series of computer software is comprehensive software developed by NUM Co., Ltd. for the production and regrinding of precision cutting tools. As the numerical control machine tools produced and sold by a certain grinding machine company in Anhui and used by a certain precision tool technology company had used the NUMROTO series computer software without permission, NUM Co., Ltd. engaged our firm to initiate corresponding rights protection litigation.

After accepting the engagement, our firm collected and organized a large amount of preliminary evidence of infringement and, in accordance with the law, applied for the adoption of evidence preservation measures against the defendants. Upon review, the Hefei Intermediate People’s Court of Anhui carried out evidence preservation against the defendants, laying a solid foundation for the characterization of the case. During the second-instance proceedings, after fully hearing the appellate opinions of both parties, the presiding judge of the IP Tribunal of the Supreme People's Court engaged in multiple rounds of communication with all parties, ultimately facilitating the parties’ reaching of a consensus, mediating the resolution of the relevant disputes, and achieving a five-year business cooperation arrangement, thereby effectively defusing the conflict between the parties.

This case is among the first batch of rights protection cases brought domestically by NUM Co., Ltd. Through the mediation of the IP Tribunal of the Supreme People's Court, the infringers were successfully transformed into licensed cooperation partners, winning high recognition and praise from the right holder and strengthening the right holder’s confidence in the judicial protection of intellectual property rights in China.

Case 4: Administrative litigation over invalidation of a series of patents involving “optical lenses”

This case was selected for inclusion in the “Annual Report (2025) of the IP Tribunal of the Supreme People's Court”.

Representation team: Haidong Yu, Xiaorong Deng, Fang Dong, Zhenying Li

This case concerns two globally leading optical lens enterprises, Sunny Optical and Chenrui Optical, and constitutes, to date, the largest-scale domestic patent infringement and invalidation litigation in the optical industry. The parties brought more than 30 suits against each other, with claims amounting to hundreds of millions, making it a milestone event in the protection of intellectual property rights in the optical industry.

In the second-instance administrative litigation over patent invalidation represented by our firm, case numbers [(2025) Zuigao Fa Zhi Xing Zhong No. 919 et al.], our firm conducted in-depth technical research and legal analysis and fully presented representation opinions during the hearings. After fully hearing the opinions of both parties, the IP Tribunal of the Supreme People's Court engaged in multiple rounds of communication with all parties and, through effective explanation on how to correctly apply for invention patents in the relevant fields, facilitated the two enterprises’ voluntary withdrawal of their lawsuits and acknowledgment of the administrative examination decisions, thereby safeguarding the order of fair competition in the industry and creating conditions for the healthy and orderly development of the sector.

In addition, the No. 564635 patent invalidation declaration case (5W131967) and the No. 564025 patent invalidation declaration case (4W115749) in this series of cases represented by our firm were both selected for inclusion in the “Compilation of Key Points of Decisions in Typical Patent Reexamination and Invalidation Cases for 2024”, providing guidance for drafting patents in the field of optical lenses.