Recently, Unitalen Law Office represented JL MAG Rare-Earth Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "JL MAG") in a patent invalidation procedure, and successfully maintained the validity of an invention patent related to slotted magnets, providing strong support for protecting the client's invention and innovation.
Summary of the Case
Previously, JL MAG, the patentee, received an invalidity request from the opposing party seeking to invalidate one of its slotted magnet patents.
After accepting the commission from JL MAG, the Unitalen team conducted an in-depth study of the granted text of the patent, its prosecution history, and multiple prior art documents submitted by the petitioner. The team also engaged in multiple rounds of communication and discussion with the patent manager and the inventor of JL MAG, gaining a thorough understanding of the differences between the patent at issue and the closest prior art with respect to the technical problems to be solved and the overall technical concept. On this basis, the team further clarified multiple distinguishing technical features of Claim 1 of the patent at issue relative to the closest prior art, the technical problems solved by those features, and the technical effects thereby achieved. Before the oral hearing, the Unitalen team also sought common-knowledge evidence to further demonstrate the differences between the patent at issue and the closest prior art with respect to the technical concept and the technical effects of the distinguishing features. Ultimately, the collegiate panel concluded that the closest prior art did not provide technical enlightenment on the adoption of the distinguishing technical features, and the petitioner did not submit evidence to prove that the corresponding distinguishing technical features were common knowledge. Since the adoption of these distinguishing technical features enabled the technical solution of Claim 1 to achieve beneficial technical effects, both Claim 1 and its dependent claims all involve an inventive step.
The successful maintenance of the patent's validity in this case is attributable to the patentee's trust and strong technical support, as well as the Unitalen team's in-depth research and analysis of the patent and prior technical documents.