Supreme People's Court

No More Hindsight Bias: China’s Supreme People's Court Reins in Patent Inventiveness Assessments

25 June 2026
For foreign applicants navigating patent litigation or invalidation in China, a common frustration is hindsight bias. Too often, CNIPA or lower courts strip down a patent into isolated technical features, find those features across disparate prior art references, and declare the invention to be "obvious". To counter such hindsight reasoning, the core criterion has always […]

China’s Supreme People’s Court (SPC) Hands Down First Patent Linkage Appeal Decision

21 September 2022
China has been implementing a plethora of new laws and measures that are particularly favorable to drug companies, such as patent term extension and patent linkage.  Details of the new implementation measures for patent linkage (technically “early dispute resolution mechanisms for drug patents”) came into effect on July 4, 2021. At around the same time, […]
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