Author: Jirui ZHENG

On November 15, 2025, the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) issued what is widely viewed as the first decision to refuse acceptance of a patent invalidation petition on the ground that the request did not reflect the petitioner’s genuine intent. The case concerns a patent held by a major pharmaceutical company.

Key Issue: Authenticity of the Petitioner’s Signature

The invalidation request was filed by an individual. The patentee challenged the authenticity of the petitioner’s intent, arguing that the petitioner had no connection to the pharmaceutical industry and that their identity might have been misused.

The turning point in the case came from a handwriting identification report. The patentee submitted a judicial appraisal showing that the signature on the petitioner’s Power of Attorney was highly unlikely to have been written by the same person who signed a notarized declaration obtained in Taiwan. The CNIPA panel accepted the expert conclusion and held that the signature on the Power of Attorney was forged.

As a result, the CNIPA found that the invalidation request—submitted on the basis of a forged legal document—did not represent the petitioner’s true intention. The panel therefore refused to accept the invalidation request.

Debate Emerges: Is the “Straw Man” Strategy Still Viable?

Following this decision, the IP community has expressed differing views on whether “straw man” filings remain permissible in future invalidation proceedings. Two main perspectives have emerged:

1.     The straw man strategy is effectively dead, as a straw man acts on behalf of another party, meaning the invalidation request would, by definition, not reflect the petitioner’s own genuine intent.

2.     The decision does not prohibit straw man filings, but rather targets abuses such as identity theft, forged signatures, or fabricated Powers of Attorney.

The author supports the second view. The core issue is not who files the invalidation petition, but whether the petition genuinely reflects the petitioner’s own intention. The “genuine intent” requirement in the Patent Examination Guidelines is focused on the authenticity of the petitioner’s identity and the legality of submitted documents—not on restricting who may file an invalidation request.

Cases like this highlight CNIPA’s increasing emphasis on the authenticity and legitimacy of invalidation filings. We will continue monitoring similar cases and hope that the CNIPA provides more explicit standards on how “genuine intent” should be assessed in practice.