Plaintiffs and defendants are all foreign companies. They have chosen to file a lawsuit in China?

The plaintiff and the defendant are all foreign enterprises.They have chosen to file a lawsuit in China?​

There was an earlier report that Ottawa's Wireless Future Technology Company (WiLAN), in Nanjing, China, filed a lawsuit against Sony Corporation of Japan. Wireless Future Technologies has sued that some of Sony's smartphones infringe on a patent related to a fourth-generation wireless network technology standard. Wireless Future Technology asks court to order Sony Mobile to pay damages800million, and ordered a ban on the sale of Sony Mobile-related phones.

It is reported that the patents involved in the lawsuit are“Control channel in communication network system”. According to the technical content, the patent is likely to constitute a standard essential patent, and since the standard essential patent is a patent that cannot be bypassed for the production and manufacture of the corresponding standard product, once the patent is found to constitute a standard essential patent, it is necessary to use the patent.“Pay the bill”It will not only be Sony Mobile, but the entire domestic smartphone industry.

Advising lawyers at the time said the Canadian company was aiming for a licensing deal with Sony. A few months earlier in the same year, Wireless Future Technologies filed a similar lawsuit against Sony in Germany, but the case was delayed.

It seems that China is becoming more and more attractive to companies that earn income through litigation and licensing by holding a large number of patents.

This is an interesting trend: for various reasons, foreign companies have chosen to file patent lawsuits in China and sue non-Chinese companies.

It can be clearly seen from the above figure that in recent years, the number of patent litigation cases of foreign plaintiffs has been increasing. Of course,2020Affected by the new crown epidemic, this trend has declined to some extent.

At the same time, the number of utility model infringement cases filed by foreign plaintiffs also showed an obvious upward trend.Douglas ClarkIt is believed that this may reflect that foreign enterprises have a better understanding of China's patent system, and more and more enterprises apply for new patents first when they are pending trial, leaving room for court litigation in advance while waiting for the authorization of invention patents.

However, the above table shows that the number of invention patent lawsuits filed by foreign plaintiffs is much less than that filed by domestic plaintiffs.

This is not difficult to understand, after all, local companies are more likely to adopt an active style in the domestic market, launching speculative lawsuits, trying to gain home advantage, while foreign companies usually take a conservative position.

These behavioral tendencies at home and abroad, of course, also affect the success rate of the case.

The above figure shows that,2015To2019During the year, the average success rate for foreign plaintiffs was84%, the national plaintiff is67%.

To some extent, this reflects that domestic plaintiffs in China are more inclined to try their luck in litigation, while foreign companies will not easily go to court unless they have a high degree of certainty.

It is worth noting that the success rate here does not take into account the issue of patent invalidity. According to experience, the reason why about half of the cases are lost is because the patent is invalid.

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