Protection of Prior Patent Rights and Interests

Protection of Prior Patent Rights

The so-called protection of prior Patent rights refers to the protection of the legitimate rights and interests of previously obtained patent rights. Article 23 of the "Patent Law of the People's Republic of China" stipulates: The design for which patent rights are granted shall be different from or similar to the design that has been publicly published in domestic and foreign publications or has been publicly used domestically before the filing date. It shall not conflict with the legitimate rights and interests previously obtained by others.

The protection of prior rights and interests is mainly aimed at the conflict of interests between patent rights obtained by earlier applications and patent rights obtained by subsequent applications, which is reflected in the following three aspects :

1. Conflict of interest between two patentees caused by repeated authorization. Duplicate authorization refers to two or more inventions with the same theme and basically the same technical features, which were applied for patents separately and both obtained patent rights;

2. Subordination Rights conflicts arising from patents. A dependent patent refers to a later-applied invention or utility model patent that is an improvement on another earlier-filed patent. It adopts the earlier patent while adding new content, and its scope of protection completely falls within Within the protection scope of the first application, but the patent right has been obtained legally;

3. Conflicts between other types of intellectual property rights and patent rights. Mainly manifested in the conflict between trademark rights, copyrights, company name rights, unique packaging of well-known products, decoration use, etc. and design patent rights.

The protection of prior patent rights and interests is mainly based on the Civil Code's "Civil activities shall follow the principles of voluntariness, fairness, compensation of equal value, and good faith" and "citizens and legal persons The legitimate civil rights and interests are protected by law and shall not be infringed upon by any organization or individual."