Cases in Spotlight
Unitalen Won Plate Solar Collector Patent Infringement Litigation
Unitalen client Nanjing Guangwei Ecoway Technology Co., Ltd. ("Guangwei") is engaged in solar utilization, power saving and high-efficiency heat exchanging technology, and owns a series of self-innovated patents. Back in 2017, Guangwei sued Zhejiang Yuteng New Energy Co., Ltd. ("Yuteng") for infringing upon Guangwei's plate solar collector invention patent. Unitalen assisted Guangwei in defeating patent invalidation petition by Yuteng and winning patent infringement litigation at Shanghai IP Court earlier this year.
On February 12, 2018, Yuteng appealed to Shanghai High Court and filed another petition for invalidation of Guangwei's patent at dispute. to the Patent Reexamination Board. During oral examination of invalidation, Unitalen defended Guangwei's patent by arguing the modification of patent at dispute does not exceed the protection scope and the patent at dispute possesses inventiveness. On the same date of court hearing in June 2018, Unitalen learnt from Patent Reexamination Board that the patent at dispute is again maintained. After hearing and several rounds of inquiry, the appeal court decides that:
1. Whether the modification of the patent at issue has exceeded the scope is not a matter for review in patent infringement dispute;
2. The alleged infringing product falls within the scope of protection of patent claims 1 and 7, and the amount of the indemnity for 500,000 yuan is reasonable, thus approved;
3. The requested compensation of 200,000 yuan for reasonable expenses in stopping infringement is also approved.
The court dismissed Yuteng's appeal and upheld the original judgment. In this case, Unitalen represented the client in several rounds of patent invalidation procedures, as well as the first and second instance of the patent infringement litigations, making sure of seamless coordination of all procedures to protect the client's patent right.
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