The Supreme People's Court (SPC), on December 28, released an Interpretation on Several Issues of Concrete Application of Law in Handling Patent Infringement Case, which became effective on January 1, 2010. The interpretation includes, among other things, the determination of protection scope of invention and utility model patents, the principle of determining designs patent infringement, the application of prior art defense and prior use defense, and determination of the non-infringement action, providing a standard for trying patent infringement case.

Article 7 of the interpretation provides that the court would adopt the all elements rule to determine the infringement, that is, the people's court should first examine the technical elements in the claims when determining whether the alleged technical solution falls within the protection scope. In addition, the interpretation further improved the application of the doctrine of equivalents in judging patent infringement.

(China IP News)