INTRODUCTION Contributed by: Andreas von Falck, Hogan Lovells International LLP
China The first anti-anti-suit injunction issued by the SPC On 22 December 2024, the Supreme People’s Court of China (SPC) issued its first anti-anti- suit injunction (AASI) in two patent infringement cases between Huawei and Netgear and other companies. The ruling resulted in a number of orders against Netgear and the other involved companies: • Throughout the duration of these two cases and after the judgments were rendered, they were barred from filing applications or peti- tions with courts, customs, or other authori- ties in the United States and other countries and regions, seeking to prohibit Huawei and its affiliated companies from: (a) continuing or initiating new patent infringement lawsuits against Netgear in China, related to the patents involved in these two cases; and (b) enforcing the judgments made by the courts of the People’s Republic of China in these two cases. • If Netgear and the other companies involved had already filed such applications or peti- tions with courts, customs, or other authori- ties in the United States and other countries and regions, they were obliged to withdraw or suspend such applications within 24 hours after receiving this ruling. • Netgear and other companies were forbidden from filing any opposing applications or peti- tions with courts, customs, or other authori- ties in the United States and other countries and regions against this ruling. • Any violations of this ruling would lead to Net- gear being fined CNY1 million per day start- ing from the date of such violation.
The SPC noted that there was evidence in the case that Netgear had already submitted peti- tions for anti-suit injunctions and anti-enforce- ment injunctions to the US courts. The SPC considered that if the US courts were to grant these applications, it would not only affect or even deprive Huawei of its substantive and pro- cedural rights, but would also have an impact on and even interfere with the litigation in China. Therefore, the SPC granted the AASI as it was held to essentially safeguard China’s judicial sovereignty over the relevant cases. It is also worth mentioning in this regard that the Munich Local Division of the Unified Patent Court and the District Court of Munich have both issued AASIs in the case of Huawei v Netgear. New developments in China’s pharmaceutical patent linkage system China formally established a patent linkage sys- tem on 1 June 2021, through the newly amended Patent Law, implemented by the Measures for the Implementation of the Mechanism for the Early Resolution of Pharmaceutical Patent Dis- putes (for Trial Implementation) (the “Measures”). The Measures essentially provide a process for resolving patent disputes at an early stage in the drug approval process. This includes a require- ment for MA holders to register relevant drug patent information on a designated platform and a requirement for applicants for generic drug MAs to declare relevant patents during the approval process. The SPC further has refined the judicial practice in this area with a key civil ruling, which has been included in the People’s Court Casebook as a reference case. The case can be summarised as follows: a Swedish company filed a lawsuit with the Bei- jing Intellectual Property Court (BJIPC), claiming that, as the holder of a Chinese invention patent
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