Case Brief

Headquartered in Holzminden, Germany, Symrise AG (hereinafter referred to as "Symrise") is one of the world's leading companies in flavors and fragrances, food and cosmetic ingredients, and nutritional supplements. In 2006, Symrise was listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. In 2023, Symrise generated revenues of EUR 4.73 billion.

In August 2023, a petitioner for invalidation submitted a request for patent invalidation against the Chinese invention patent (hereinafter referred to as "the patent involved") entitled "Antimicrobial Compositions" owned by Symrise, which included invalidation grounds such as insufficient disclosure, claims being not supported by the description, and lack of an inventive step.

Symrise entrusted Unitalen as the agent to respond to the invalidation request. After accepting the entrustment, the Unitalen team carefully studied the patent, the Request, and the large amount of evidence materials submitted by the petitioner, and had in-depth discussions with the client. On this basis, the team prepared a detailed defense to each invalidation grounds in the invalidation request and submitted it to the collegiate panel.

Therein, for the invalidation ground of insufficient disclosure, the petitioner for invalidation argued that the embodiments of the patent involved do not disclose the testing method. The Unitalen team held that the description of the patent involved has explicitly disclosed the data of the effect. Other paragraphs of the description have explicitly disclosed the relevant standards for testing. Thus those skilled in the art can readily select the corresponding standards for testing based on the disclosure of the description. For the invalidation ground that the description does not support the claims, the Unitalen team analyzed the reasons why individual features are supported by the description, submitted the supplemental experimental data, and responded to the relevant evidence provided by the petitioner for invalidation one by one, respectively. For the invalidation ground of the lack of an inventive step, the Unitalen team focused on stating that there is no technical enlightenment in the prior art and that there are opposite teachings and other counterarguments.

Based on the circumstances of the oral proceedings, the Unitalen team believed that further supplemental experimental data are required to prove sufficient disclosure of the patent involved and that the description supports the claims. On this basis, the team prepared the supplemental agent's opinion and submitted it to the CNIPA. In the end, the CNIPA made a Decision of Examination upon Request for Invalidation without requiring amendments to the claims of the patent involved and upheld the validity of the patent right.

Key Points of the Decision of the Case

"If the test method for experimental data is well known in the art, and those skilled in the art can determine the above method based on the disclosure of the description, it cannot be determined that the disclosure of the description is insufficient on the ground that the test method is not disclosed in the description."