Recently, Unitalen Law Office represented a company in successfully invalidating the opposing party's design patent for shoe soles in patent invalidation proceedings, providing strong support for the client's related litigation proceedings.

Case Brief

Previously, in a lawsuit dispute with the client company of Unitalen, the patentee, a natural person, requested the client company to cease infringement and claimed damages for infringement

In this case, there was a prior sale of products on the market that were similar to the patent involved, and prior to the filing date of the patent involved, details of the appearance of the prior-sold products had been disclosed in a post on the XiaoHongShu (RedNote) platform. On this basis, the Unitalen team collected evidence for the post using timestamp notarization, and specifically verified the content publication and modification mechanism of the XiaoHongShu platform. When a user modifies the content of a XiaoHongShu post, the publication time of the post is also updated synchronously. Ultimately, the authenticity of the XiaoHongShu post was accepted by the collegiate panel, and accordingly, the patent rights involved were declared to be invalid in full.

Highlights Summary

In this case, the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) holds that "XiaoHongShu is a well-known Chinese platform for sharing lifestyles and consumer experiences. After registration, users can upload and publish posts to the Internet. The time displayed at the end of a published post indicates its publication time. If a user modifies a post he/she has published, the end of the post will display "Edited on..." to indicate the last editing time". In view of this, the CNIPA recognized the authenticity of the XiaoHongShu network evidence. In addition, the CNIPA believes that "although XiaoHongShu posts have selections of visibility ranges, which can be switched at will without leaving a trace, the post involved in this case relates to product promotion, showing a clear intention of sharing with others. The post was already in a public state before the filing date of the patent involved, which has a high probability. The challenge raised by the patentee is not sufficient to overturn the conclusion in the absence of clear counter-evidence". It is thereby inferred that the evidence had been disclosed prior to the filing date of the patent involved. The outcome of this case provides both positive and negative references for the determination of authenticity and disclosure of online evidence in patent confirmation proceedings.