In an administrative litigation case concerning rejection and reexamination of subject-matter eligibility of a business method patent application represented by China Science Patent & Trademark Agent Ltd. (CSPTAL), the Supreme People's Court (referred to as “the Supreme Court” hereafter) rendered a final judgment determining that the patent application complies with the provisions of the Chinese Patent Law on subject matters eligible for patent protection. This case has been widely discussed and paid a lot of attention by the intellectual property community, and recently selected into Judgment Digests of the Intellectual Property Court of the Supreme People's Court (2024).

This case is of typical significance in terms of the legal status of business method patents. The Supreme Court’s decision demonstrates positive support for innovators filing applications for business method patents. The related patent application, which is directed to a solution for automatically changing prices of goods through sharing, went through substantive examination, reexamination, and first-instance proceedings, all of which held that the patent application did not meet the requirements for subject matters eligible for patent protection as provisioned in the Chinese Patent Law. During the examination and litigation procedures, with full trust from the client, we conducted in-depth research together with the client, and proposed a variety of strategies for response and amendment. By elaborately explaining and graphically demonstrating the technical problem involved in the business method for solving business issues as recited in the application document, we provided a detailed description of connection between technical problem, technical features, and business method, facilitating the Supreme Court to review and reconsider eligibility of the business method claimed in the patent application.

In the judgment, the Supreme Court explicitly noted attention to coordinating and utilizing different functions of examination on patent subject-matter and substantive examination. It was stated that, when conducting examination on subject-matter of business method patents, a relatively lenient examination standard can be applied so as to fulfill the baseline function of subject-matter eligibility examination, unless it is obviously unrelated to any technical solution. On the other hand, a relatively strict examination standard can be followed during the stage of substantive examination. The Supreme Court’s decision provides a far-reaching guidance for examination on patent applications involving business methods in the future.

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