General

"In the first five years of China's accession to the WTO, the economic compensation caused by intellectual property disputes by Chinese enterprises totaled more than US $1 billion, and some disputes even caused serious damage to related industries. At that time, 86% of the world's R&D investment and more than 90% of invention patents were in the hands of developed countries. After more than 20 years, the strength of Chinese enterprises has been growing, and they have gradually changed from being 'powerless' to being able to defend their rights in international trade." At the recent seminar on active overseas rights protection, Wei Wei, senior vice president and general counsel of Huada Intelligent Manufacturing, introduced the company's experience in dealing with intellectual property disputes over the years.

"From January to September 2020 alone, Huada Intelligent Manufacturing spent more than 152 million yuan on overseas litigation and patent application fees, accounting for 78.31% of the total management fees." Wei Wei took Huada Intelligent Manufacturing as an example to illustrate the patent lawsuit against Inmena. In May 2019, Huada Intelligent Manufacturing sued in the United States for infringement of the patent of Inmena, accusing it of infringing the patent of the two-color sequencing technology of CG, a company under Huada Intelligent Manufacturing, which involves various Inmena gene sequencers and related reagents. Huada Zhizao demands that Yinmeina stop the infringement, apply for a permanent injunction against Yinmeina and compensate for the losses. In the end, the court ruled that Huada Intelligent Manufacturing received USD 334 million compensation for Meina's infringement of its patent for dual color sequencing technology.

At that time, the international trade market of Huada Intelligent Manufacturing was expanding rapidly, and Meina launched a global patent sniping war. "This time, Huada Intelligent Manufacturing took the initiative to fight a patent lawsuit with 7.5% of its annual revenue, which not only safeguarded the legitimate rights and interests of the company, but also further removed the barriers for the enterprise's products based on CoolMPS sequencing technology to enter the American market, and won more market opportunities." Wei Wei said that through long-term investment, Huada Intelligent Manufacturing already has a source patent layout in the field of gene sequencing, which is also one of the core assets of Huada Intelligent Manufacturing. The development and protection of intellectual property rights is an important basis for the sustainable development of Huada Intelligent Manufacturing in the field of gene sequencing and the provision of first-class life technology core tools for the industry.

"The victory of this lawsuit demonstrates the seriousness and firm confidence of Huada Intelligent Manufacturing in protecting its own intellectual property rights." Wei Wei said.

Despite the initial success of overseas rights protection, the overall situation faced by China's international trade enterprises in overseas rights protection is still not optimistic. Dai Xiaomeng, a lawyer from Guangdong Huajin Law Firm, said that at present, the fierce competition faced by Chinese enterprises in the international market mainly comes from the United States, Europe, Japan and other developed countries. Accordingly, the regions with high incidence of intellectual property disputes are also concentrated in these regions. From the domestic perspective, Chinese enterprises involved in litigation are mainly distributed in Guangdong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu and other provinces and cities.

Dai Xiaomeng said that, on the one hand, there are few domestic enterprises actively responding to the current overseas intellectual property disputes. When overseas intellectual property disputes occur, more than 60% of Chinese enterprises choose not to respond to lawsuits. The result of not responding to the lawsuit is often that the enterprise pays huge compensation, or high patent and trademark royalties, or withdraws from the country's market. On the other hand, enterprises lack overseas intellectual property layout. While expanding the international trade market, enterprises cannot make strategic deployment of global intellectual property rights and do not have a systematic long-term plan for intellectual property rights. As a result, when faced with frequent intellectual property litigation and disputes, enterprises often need to pay a lot of money to settle.

To solve these problems and reduce disputes, Dai Xiaomeng suggested that enterprises should do a good job in IP management system, establish an external rights protection mechanism, avoid product infringement, and improve sales channels. At the same time, in-depth research on the intellectual property risks of the industry and other competitors, learn from the experience of professional institutions, get familiar with international trade rules in advance, and make arrangements for dispute response mechanisms.