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This case is a major case involving foreign-related intellectual property rights and competition disputes. The amount involved in the litigation amounted to RMB 100 million and involved the patent rights and trade secrets of Catalytic Distillation Technologies in China. The court of first instance jurisdiction was in Shandong Provincial Higher People's Court, and the plaintiff sued for three patents and trade secrets infringement by the defendant.
The defendant challenged the jurisdiction of the case and claimed: The case involves three different patents and trade secrets. In fact, it covers four completely different legal relationships and cases and is not suitable for trial in one lawsuit. When the case is divided, The average amount of litigating amount should be 25 million, and cannot reach 100 million, so Shandong Provincial Higher People's Court of First Instance of the case does not have jurisdiction. According to Article 52 of the Civil Procedure Law of the People's Republic of China, the people's court considers that the common lawsuit that can be jointly tried and heard requires the consent of the parties. In this case, the defendant disagreed with the joinder?of litigations.
The Supreme People's Court held that the common lawsuit advocated by the defendant required the consent of the parties to apply to the joinder?of litigations and was different from the circumstances of the case. In addition, there is no basis on whether there should be allocating the standard amount according to the technology involved equally in the jurisdiction of this case, and the plaintiff advocated that the defendant without the plaintiff's permission, the use of the series of patented technologies and trade secrets, the commercialization of the alkylation vertical reaction tower, the defendant's behavior infringes a number of rights, resulting in an overall damage. Therefore,?the plaintiff’s action on amalgamating the patent infringement litigation with the trade secret infringement is in line with the law, but also facilitates?the court in this lawsuit case to make the facts clear. Thus, in our opinion, Shandong High Court is not improper as a court for first instance.
Accordingly, the Supreme People's Court made a final ruling, rejected the appeal and upheld the original ruling.
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