As an intangible asset, a very important feature of patents compared with fixed assets is their greater instability. If a patent is easily invalidated for various reasons, it means that it is easy to lose economic value. Therefore, if enterprises want to cultivate high-value patents, the premise is to protect the legal value of patents, that is, the stability of patent rights must be strong, on this basis, the technical value and market value of patents can be fully utilized.
Whether the patent right can be invalidated is essentially related to the stability of the patent right. Article 45 of the Patent Law clearly stipulates: From the date of the announcement of the grant of the patent right by the Patent Administration Department of the State Council, any unit or individual who believes that the grant of the patent right does not comply with the relevant provisions of this Law may request the Patent Reexamination Board to declare the patent right invalid. Article 47 of the Patent Law clarifies the effect of invalidation: the patent right declared invalid shall be deemed to be non-existent from the beginning.
So how to improve the stability of granted patents, the following will introduce the protection scope of claims and the stability of patent rights:
First of all, applicants should pay attention to avoid pursuing unreasonably excessive protection. Applicants should realize that the maximum scope of protection granted by the granted patent right does not depend on the applicant's subjective will, but on the degree of innovation of his invention. China's Patent Law stipulates various restrictive measures on the scope of protection of patent rights, the most important of which are provisions on novelty and creativity. From the perspective of seeking a wider scope of protection, the fewer the technical features described in the claims, the better, but the fewer the technical features described in the claims, the more “upper” the technical terms used to express these technical features are, The easier it is for the existing technology to deny its novelty and creativity. Therefore, from the perspective of seeking a good stability of the patent right, the more technical features listed in the claims, the better, but the more technical features described in the claims, the more specific these technical features are expressed, and their determination The scope of patent protection is smaller. Therefore, when defining the scope of protection of the claims, it is necessary to take into account both to achieve a reasonable balance.
Secondly, in the process of writing, the specification should be as detailed as possible. If the claims want to generalize a technical feature to a higher-level concept, then the description should give an appropriate number of examples to prove that the technical solution uses the commonality of all the lower-level concepts contained in this higher-level concept, which can be achieved The same expected effect. If it is impossible to determine whether all the subordinate concepts contained in this general concept can achieve the purpose of the invention and achieve the expected effect, then in the process of writing the claims, there should be at least one technical solution of the dependent claims is available Supported by the manual, in order to be able to attack and retreat. Because it is in the subsequent procedure, there are strict requirements for the amendment of the claims. The specific ways to modify claims in invalid procedures are generally limited to the deletion of claims, the deletion of technical solutions, and the further limitation of claims (one or more technical features described in other claims are added to the claims to reduce protection range).
In summary, the clearer the technical features in the claims and the more reasonable the level of protection scope defined by each claim in the claims, the higher the probability that the patent right will be maintained.
