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Apr 14,2020
Express n° 5 Case: PT ∣ Beijing IP Court Concludes the First Patent Infringement Case Directing to Microorganism Protection
On
March 17, 2020, the Beijing IP Court made a judgment that two Tianjin-based
companies infringed the CN patent No. 201310030601.2 (hereinafter referred to
as the “Patent”) owned by Shanghai Finc Food Co., Ltd., the largest specialty
mushroom grower in China. The Patent claims a strain of pure white hypsizygus
marmoreus (Finc-W-247) deposited as CCTCC NO: M2012378.
Focus
of trying the case lies on how to determine the accused product fallen into the
scope of the Patent. In this field, it is necessary to use technical means for
comparing whether the accused mushroom is derived from the identical strain of
the Patent. The Court thus requested a judicial appraisal institution to
conduct the comparison by detesting the DNA sequences and adopted its
conclusion that the two are identical in the whole specific 975bp DNA
fragments. The defendants’ allegation of comparing the whole DNA sequences as
the basis was denied by the Court due to lack of evidence for supporting that
such a method would be more reasonable.
In Beijing IP Court, this is the first concluded case involving an infringement dispute on the patented microorganism per se. It is of some importance and worth further exploration in trying future cases involving of this technical field.