Beijing Courts Issued Consequential Judgments On Life-Science Patents

The Beijing Higher People's Court (BHPC) and Beijing Intellectual Property Court (BIPC) recently issued their judgments in a number of high-profile validity cases in the life science area. The courts' reasoning in the judgments, unless negated in future appeal or retrial proceedings, will have general consequence beyond the specific cases.

Impact of a prior-art reference on the inventiveness of a Swiss-type claim

In this case, BIPC ruled that a mere statement in a reference like "the drug has shown exciting preliminary result in treating a disease" is enough to undermine the inventiveness of a Swiss-type claim, and there is no further need for the reference to provide detailed experimental/clinical data to convince persons in the art that the drug indeed has the therapeutic effect or has the potential.