Recently, the tire equipment manufacturer VMI released to the media that they succeeded in invalidating a utility model of SAFE-RUN, one of their major competitors in China. This news draws a lot of attention to the drastic patent litigation between SAFE-RUN and VMI.

Below is the in-depth analysis on this fighting within the tire industry.

"The ‘patent invalidation case’ mentioned by VMI is true.”, SAFE-RUN says. According to the information published on the website of Patent Reexamination Board (PRB) of State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO), PRB issued a decision on the Request for Invalidation (Decision) to Safe-Run on 22nd August 2016, announcing that Safe-Run’s utility model No. 201220228005.6 is invalid.

According to Article 41 of “Chinese Patent Law”, SAFE-RUN is entitled to appeal to the Beijing Intellectual Property Court within 3 months from the day when the company receives the Decision, demanding to overrule the negative Decision. Thus, the Decision has not come into effect till the publication of this article.

On the other hand, SAFE-RUN says, the utility model declared invalid is currently not applied to any Safe-Run’s products, so even if this utility model is invalid eventually it will not affect the sales and IP protection of the company’s products. In addition, the purpose of this administrative Decision is to determine whether Safe-Run’s utility model No 201220228005.6 is valid, rather than if Safe-Run’s products infringe VMI’s patent rights.

Safe-Run states that whether Safe-Run’s utility model is invalid does not have any connection with whether Safe-Run’s products infringe VMI’s patent rights. “These are totally two different issues.”

In fact, Safe-Run already filed several lawsuits against VMI for confirming non-infringement respectively at the Shanghai Intellectual Property Court and Suzhou Intermediate People’s Court as early as in April 2016 and July 2016, demanding the courts to confirm that Safe-Run’s products do not infringe VMI’s patents rights. VMI responded in August, 2016 and filed another 3 patent infringement cases against Safe-Run, accusing Safe-Run’s products to infringe VMI’s patent rights at the Suzhou Intermediate People’s Court. For all 3 cases, Safe-Run has actively started the preparation for the response. Currently, these 3 cases have not come into substantive hearing stage.