The case where Ge Xibo (Jiangsu) Co., Ltd. requests to declare the patent right of the "Electric Hedge Trimmer" design for appearance of Zhejiang xx Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. invalid 

On September 7, 2020, the entity requesting party, Requestor Guoxi (Jiangsu) Co., Ltd., first entrusted a certain agency in Beijing to submit an invalidation request to the National Intellectual Property Administration. The request aimed to invalidate the design patent held by the patentee, Zhejiang xx Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd., which was titled "Electric Hedge Trimming Machine". After review by the National Intellectual Property Administration, a Decision on Invalidation Request Review No. 49367 was issued, maintaining the validity of the patent. 

The company Xilibo (Jiangsu) Co., Ltd. has entrusted us to handle the second invalidation request case. After carefully studying the aforementioned examination decision and conducting re-search and evidence collection for the involved patent, our side submitted another invalidation request to the National Intellectual Property Administration on October 29, 2021, requesting the invalidation of the aforementioned design patent. 

After the National Intellectual Property Administration reviewed our submitted invalidation request and related evidence, it concluded that the involved patent did not have significant differences from the comparison documents provided by us. The involved patent did not comply with the provisions of Article 23(2) of the Patent Law, and thus made the 5551x Invalidation Request Review Decision, declaring the entire patent right invalid. 

The Patent Examination Guidelines state: "For invalidation cases where a review decision has already been made regarding the patent rights, if a request for invalidation is made again based on the same reasons and evidence, such request will not be accepted or processed." 

"If the reasons for the re-submitted invalidation request (referred to as the invalidation grounds) or the evidence are not taken into account in the prior invalidation request review decision due to time constraints or other reasons, then this request does not fall under the circumstances where it is not accepted or processed as mentioned above." 

In this case, the National Intellectual Property Administration had already made a review decision on the invalidation request submitted by the requester for the first time, maintaining the validity of the patent. After the requester entrusted us as the agent, we supplemented new evidence based on the comparison design provided by the requester, and then filed an invalidation request again against the same patent with the National Intellectual Property Administration. This does not violate the principle of "one matter, one decision" in the invalidation procedure. In the second invalidation request procedure, the National Intellectual Property Administration held that the evidence 1 and evidence 3 provided by us had combined inducing effect, and after combining, they did not have obvious differences compared with the involved patent. Therefore, the involved patent did not comply with the provisions of Article 23, Paragraph 2 of the Patent Law.