In March 2018, Sinoma Advanced Materials Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Sinoma”), a leading enterprise in China’s ceramic industry, received a patent infringement warning letter from the industry giant VESUVIUS USA CORP., claiming that a certain type of product of Sinoma infringed its patent for invention CN101128715B granted in China, requiring Sinoma to immediately stop production and sales of this type of product, and also sounding an infringement warning to downstream suppliers who used this type of product. To this end, Sinoma entrusted TDIP& PARTNERS (hereinafter referred to as “TDIP”) to deal with this thorny issue.
       TDIP quickly set up a professional team to develop a solution and filed a request for patent invalidation with the Patent Reexamination Board. It was very difficult to invalid this patent since its US and European counterpart patents had been granted. However, the TDIP team found through search that the afore-mentioned patent had become the prior art as early as more than 20 years before the filing date of this patent. In the process of invalidation, the TDIP team won the debate in the oral proceedings with detailed evidence, professional knowledge and reasonable attitude. In the end, the Patent Reexamination Board declared the patent right of Vesuvius invalid in whole.
       The infringement warnings and possible litigations faced by Sinoma were all solved, and some of the patent barriers in the development of China’s ceramic industry were also broken, contributing to better development of the national industry.
       Annex: Translation of the first page of the invalidation decision