Case brief:

Shanghai Finc Bio-tech Inc applied for and received a patent for its white shimeji mushroom strain in 2013. 

Because the mushroom variety can be introduced and propagated through asexual propagation, many mushroom production enterprises have separated the strain and used it privately, causing significant damage to the rights and interests of Finc Bio-tech.

The Shanghai Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee especially dispatched technical experts from the Shanghai Academy of Agricultural Sciences to provide the company with technical support and legal advice. Experts suggested that Finc Bio-tech should adopt specific fragment detection, combined with product morphology, as the basis for infringement determinations.

In 2017, Finc Bio-tech filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Tianjin Hongbin Hesheng Agricultural Technology Development Co Ltd and other companies in the Beijing Intellectual Property Court. After comparisons were made, it turned out that the strain the infringer used and the white shimeji mushroom strain were the same.   

The first-instance court determined that the infringed products fell into the protection scope of the patent right involved and ordered the infringing companies to stop the infringements and compensate Finc Bio-tech for the economic loss of 1 million yuan ($148,792) each. In August 2021, the Supreme People's Court rejected the appeal and upheld the original judgment. 

Significance:

The case was China's first patent infringement involving a microbial invention. In the trial, the court clarified the decision rules to use microbial preservation numbers to limit the protection scope and established the criteria to judge this kind of case. It provides an important reference for the trial of such cases.