Rules For The Interpretation Of Patent Claims: Administrative And Judicia

Nowadays,the importance of intellectual property is constantly increasing,patent application and right maintenance has become a hot spot in the market economy.Due to the inherent defects of language and characters and the limited quality of patent application documents in China,the interpretation of patent claims has become a necessary procedure in the process of patent authorization,confirmation and infringement litigation.Due to the binary and three-dimensional system of the administrative link of patent examination(patent authorization and confirmation link)and the judicial link of patent infringement for a long time,the interpretation of patent claims has presented different characteristics.How to treat and comprehend these discrepancy and what measures to take to improve the current system have become an important issue in the intellectual property field.This paper takes the consistency and difference of the interpretation rules of patent claims in patent authorization,confirmation and infringement litigation as the starting point,puts forward its own views and corresponding countermeasures and suggestions,hoping to contribute a little to the unification of administrative and judicial aspects of the interpretation rules of patent claims,better protect the patentee and stabilize the legal expectation of the public for patent rights.The first part of this article is to raise questions,analyze the necessity of discussion,and point out that patent claims,as the determination of the scope of patent protection,must be accurate and reasonable.While the technology closely integrated with the patent claims is always in a state of dynamic update.The update of technical terms is also a rapid iteration.If the interpretation cannot determine its meaning,the scope of protection of the patent right recorded in the claims will be unstable and cannot satisfy the dual attributes of the claims principle and the advertising principle.The second part of this article traces and sorts out the interpretation of patent claims,and comprehensively sorts out the method,principle,difficulty and history of claims interpretation.It refers to the mainstream interpretation method at the emergence stage.Including literal interpretation,equivalent interpretation and purpose-oriented interpretation.Correspondingly,the interpretation principle of claims includes the principle of peripheral limitation,the principle of central limitation and the principle of compromise.The third part of this article describes the rules for the interpretation of claims in the administrative process.Specifically,it lists the legislation for the interpretation of claims in the patent authorization and confirmation first.Then it discusses the legal application of claim interpretation in patent approval and confirmation,and finally summarizes the logic of claim interpretation in patent approval and confirmation.The fourth part of this article is about the interpretation rules of claims in the judicial process.Like the third part,it points out the legislative status of the interpretation of claims in patent infringement litigation first,and next analyzes the judicial practice of claim interpretation in patent infringement litigation through case studies,and finally,based on my own understanding,evaluate the progress of claim interpretation in patent infringement litigation.The fifth part of this article compares the interpretation rules of claims in the administrative link with the judicial link,and focuses on the conflict between the interpretation rules of the claims in the two different links.The first is the forms of conflict of interpretation rules in the administrative link and the judicial link,and describes both the consistency and the difference between the two,and then analyzes the reasons for the conflict between the two and the problems that the difference has caused and may cause.The sixth part of this article puts forward the author’s own resolutions and prospects of the conflict between the two.For the resolution of the conflict,the author believes that the scope of protection of the claims should be clarified as much as possible in the authorization process,and in the confirmation and infringement links should be limited the tolerance for the patentee appropriately.The seventh part of this article is the conclusion part.