China's Supreme People's Court: Patent Attorneys May Not Seek Invalidation Through a Proxy
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The Intellectual Property Court of China's Supreme People's Court (SPC) has published in English a typical case on patent attorneys who file invalidation requests through someone else. The English version appeared on 26 October 2026. The judgment itself, (2022) Zui Gao Fa Zhi Xing Zhong No. 716, was handed down on 31 August 2023, and the court first published its headnote in Chinese in 2025.
The patent was a utility model (No. 201620383079.5) for a camera used in parking lot control systems. An invalidation request was filed in the name of an individual, and the patent office declared the patent wholly invalid in decision No. 49746 of 11 May 2021. The patentee lost before the Beijing IP Court and appealed. The parties' names are redacted in the published case.
According to the published case, the requester's son, who acted as her litigation representative, had worked at the patent office's reexamination board from 2007 to 2012 before leaving. The court treated the requests as the work of a patent agency and attorney, and found that at least 25 invalidation requests had been filed in the mother's name. Article 18 of the Regulations on Patent Agency bars patent agencies and patent attorneys from requesting invalidation in their own name. Using another person's name to do so, the court held, is a substantive breach of that rule.
The breach did not save the patent. The SPC upheld the invalidation, holding that the review procedure was not rendered unlawful, and referred the suspected violation to the competent authorities for handling.
The approach separates two questions that are often blurred: whether a challenge to a patent is right on the merits, and whether the person behind it played by the professional rules. Indonesian practitioners will recognise the tension. Third parties can object to a patent application at DJKI during publication, and the Commercial Court hears patent cancellation suits, but we are not aware of an Indonesian decision dealing with consultants who file through nominees.
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