Recently, Zhongwei Bus & Coach Group and its affiliates welcomed a complete victory in their disputes with German bus maker Neoplan. Zhongwei has been represented by Lifang partners Xie Guanbin, Sun Xi and Zhang Bin and has won in both patent invalidation and infringement proceedings.

Neoplan is a well-known bus maker in Germany. In early 2009, Neoplan filed a patent infringement charge against Zhongwei and its affiliates in Beijing No.1 Intermediate People’s Court, stating that they infringed upon its design patent No. 200430088722.4. The Court made out the first instance judgment and ordered Zhongwei to pay damages of RMB21.16 million to Neoplan. This case is known as “the biggest bus infringement case” in China.

Zhongwei then came to Lifang and entrusted Lifang to represent it in the appeal. On behalf of Zhongwei, Lifang filed an invalidation request against Neoplan’s patent to the Patent Reexamination Board (PRB), although Zhongwei had previously made several failed attempts to invalidate the patent. After making a careful preparation of new evidence, we won the support of the PRB who declared the entire patent invalid. Neoplan appealed the PRB decision to the court, but was not supported by either the first or the second instance courts. Eventually, with Judgment Gao Xing Zhong Zi No.2148 by Beijing High People’s Court taking effect, the subject patent has been entirely invalidated.

Getting back to the infringement dispute, with the invalidation of the involved patent, the first instance judgement of the infringement case lost its factual basis. Recently, Beijing High People’s Court made out Civil Judgment (2009) Gao Ming Zhong Zi No.2116, revoking the fist instance judgment, finding that Zhongwei did not infringe patent right and rejecting all of Neoplan’s claims.