On June 29, 2026, the Supreme People's Court rendered a final judgment in the case of dispute over infringement of an invention patent, holding that the accused infringing technical solution did not fall within the scope of protection of the patent-in-suit, and that Company B and Company C did not constitute infringement.
The main reasons include: the "verification code" in the accused infringing technical solution differs fundamentally in function and effect from the "verification code" in the patent-in-suit — the former is used to activate a bank card for use, while the latter is used to verify download authorization; in the accused infringing technical solution, some personalization information is already stored in the mobile phone before verification, whereas the patent-in-suit requires all such information to be transmitted by the network platform only after successful verification, so the two are neither identical nor equivalent in terms of information transmission; the "application" in the patent-in-suit refers to a mobile phone APP with a visual interface, and does not include a secure element; although the "Wallet" APP in the accused infringing technical solution is pre-installed rather than downloaded after verification, it is equivalent to that feature. In the end, the Supreme People's Court dismissed the appeal and upheld the first-instance judgment.
The appellant, Company A, is the exclusive licensee of invention patent No. 201310049634.1, entitled "Mobile Device, Virtual Valuable Item Conversion System, and Conversion Method." It discovered that the appellants, Company B and Company C, had offered for sale and sold iPhone series products equipped with Apple Pay functionality on the official website www.apple.com.cn, and believed that such products fell within the scope of protection of claim 29 of the patent before amendment (i.e., claim 27 after amendment). On January 28, 2021, Company A filed a lawsuit with the Beijing Intellectual Property Court, requesting that the two defendants be ordered to immediately cease the infringement.
The Beijing Intellectual Property Court held that at least one or more technical features of the accused infringing technical solution were neither identical nor equivalent to the corresponding technical features of claim 27 of the patent-in-suit, and that the solution did not fall within the scope of protection of the patent-in-suit. The court therefore dismissed all of Company A's claims. Both parties appealed to the Supreme People's Court.
Disputed Issues
The disputed issues in the second instance were: 1. whether the accused infringing technical solution fell within the scope of protection of the patent-in-suit, and whether Company A's claim for injunctive relief could be upheld if Company B and Company C's conduct constituted infringement; 2. whether the first-instance judgment was rendered in violation of statutory procedure.
The Supreme People's Court held that the accused infringing technical solution had features identical to technical features 27.3 (electrical connection), 27.5 (control module connection relationship), and 27.8 (application replacing the function of a physical card) of claim 27 of the patent-in-suit; with respect to technical feature 27.6 (verification code), the verification code in the patent-in-suit is used to verify download authorization, whereas the "activation code" in the accused infringing technical solution is used to activate a bank card for use — the two are neither identical nor equivalent; with respect to technical feature 27.7 (application and personalization information), the pre-installed "Wallet" APP in Apple phones is equivalent to the "application" in the patent-in-suit, but the patent-in-suit requires the network platform to transmit all personalization information only after successful verification, whereas in the accused infringing technical solution, some personalization information is already stored on the phone before verification — the two are neither identical nor equivalent. In summary, at least one or more technical features of the accused infringing technical solution are neither identical nor equivalent to the corresponding features of claim 27 of the patent-in-suit, and thus the solution does not fall within the scope of protection of the patent-in-suit. The first-instance court's refusal to permit Company A's requests to add claims and to investigate and collect evidence did not constitute a serious violation of statutory procedure. Accordingly, the Supreme People's Court dismissed the appeal and upheld the original judgment.
The text of the second-instance judgment is provided below for reference:
文章来源：中国裁判文书网