Case Brief: The plaintiff is a large-scale manufacturing enterprise in Dongguan City, Guangdong Province, specializing in R&D, production and sales of high-precision connectors and LED brackets, and owns a design patent related to a cable connector (hereinafter referred to as the patent design involved). The third party filed a request for invalidation of the patent on the ground that the design did not significantly differ from the prior design, and failed to comply with Article 23.2 of the Chinese Patent Law (CPL), and the CNIPA made a decision of invalidation.

The plaintiff entrusted Jieqiong ZHU, lawyer of J's, and Chunhui LI, patent attorney of J's IP Agency (hereinafter collectively referred to as the plaintiff's agents) to file an administrative lawsuit on invalidation of the design patent (i.e., the case) with the Beijing Intellectual Property Court (hereinafter referred to as the court), requesting to revoke the decision of examination upon request for invalidation issued by the CNIPA. In the end, the plaintiff won the lawsuit.

The core dispute of the case is whether there is a significant difference between the patent design involved and the prior design as stipulated in Article 23.2 CPL.

The CNIPA held that there was no significant difference between the patent design involved and the prior design. There were four differences between the patent design involved and the prior design, wherein, difference (1) accounted for a small area of the overall product, and was a "local subtle difference"; difference (2) was a functional and customary design, and attracted little attention from normal consumers because it was located on the back of the product; and differences (3) and (4) took a much smaller portion in the small size of the product itself and thus were also local subtle differences.

Centered on the above reasons, the plaintiff's agents determined the prosecution idea: to revoke the invalidation decision of the CNIPA, we must stress on arguing that the four differences pointed out by the CNIPA are not local subtle differences in the eyes of a normal consumer. To determine whether the differences are local subtle differences, it is firstly required to define "normal consumer", and then to argue that in the view of a "normal consumer", the four differences produce a significant impact on the overall visual effect of the product.

The plaintiff's attorneys, guided by the above idea, made rigorous arguments and finally the plaintiff's claims were upheld by the court.