The Supreme People's Court concluded an appeal in an administrative dispute concerning the invalidation against a design patent. With respect to the specific question of how to determine whether a design patent has an obvious difference when compared to a combination of prior art design features, the Court made clear that arbitrarily extracted points, lines, or surfaces are generally not considered prior art design features eligible for combination. If the corresponding parts of the designs already show significant differences, then it serves no practical purpose to assess whether a teaching for combination exists. Furthermore, if the particular manner of combination exceeds the knowledge level of ordinary consumers and their understanding of the relevant product, it should generally be considered that there is no teaching for combination.
