The Beijing Intellectual Property Court recently handed down the first-instance judgment in the administrative dispute case over the invalidation of invention patent rights ((2026) Jing 73 Xing Chu No. 4368). The court fully dismissed all litigation claims filed by the petitioner for patent invalidation, upheld the legality and validity of Decision No. 610449 issued by the National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA), and confirmed that all claims of the invention patent titled “Bactericidal Composition with Synergistic Effect” (Patent No.: 201410329265.6) held by Adama Huifeng (Jiangsu) Co., Ltd. remain in full force.

As the legal representative of the patentee (the third party in the case), the legal team from T&C fully represented the client throughout the entire proceedings. The team comprehensively safeguarded the client’s legitimate intellectual property rights and interests in both the patent invalidation procedure and the subsequent administrative litigation.

Case Background

The involved patent falls within the technical field of compound pesticide bactericidal compositions. It protects a synergistic bactericidal composition featuring thiophanate as Component A and pyraclostrobin or picoxystrobin as Component B with a weight ratio ranging from 1:30 to 30:1. The patent also covers the formulation forms of the composition and its application in preventing and treating crop diseases. Verified by extensive experimental data, the composition achieves unexpected synergistic bactericidal effects at the specific ratio, and can effectively control a variety of agricultural fungal diseases including grape downy mildew, wheat rust and potato late blight, boasting high industrial application value.

A third-party petitioner filed a patent invalidation request with the CNIPA, claiming that all claims of the involved patent lacked creativity. Supported by multiple pieces of prior art evidence, the petitioner’s core arguments stated that thiophanate belongs to the same category of compounds as isothiazolinone disclosed in prior art with identical action mechanisms, and thus could be conventionally replaced by those skilled in the art. The petitioner also contended that prior art had already disclosed the compounding of thiophanate with methoxyacrylate fungicides, and the patented composition could be obtained through limited routine experiments, requesting a full invalidation of the patent.

After oral hearings, the CNIPA issued Decision No. 610449, affirming that Claims 1 to 8 of the involved patent possessed statutory creativity under the Patent Law and maintaining the overall validity of the patent right. Dissatisfied with the decision, the invalidation petitioner filed an administrative lawsuit with the Beijing Intellectual Property Court, requesting the court to revoke the CNIPA’s decision and order the administration to make a new ruling.

Legal Representation and Core Disputes

Entrusted by Adama Huifeng (Jiangsu) Co., Ltd., the legal team of T&C conducted in-depth research on the technical background of pesticide chemical compounding and sorted out all experimental data of the involved patent. Targeting the plaintiff’s litigation grounds, the team established a comprehensive defense system, focusing on core disputes including the creativity judgment of pesticide composition patents, the unpredictability of compounding effects, and the existence of technical enlightenment in prior art.

The team clarified technical differences to prove the unpredictability of compounding effects.

In response to the plaintiff’s claim that “fungicides of the same category can be directly replaced with predictable effects”, the Caihe legal team elaborated that despite belonging to the isothiazolinone general category, thiophanate differs from the isothiazolinone in comparative documents in terms of the fused benzene ring structure on the parent ring. Such structural differences change the conjugated system and directly affect the interaction between pesticides and target sites. In the field of pesticide compounding, the combination of two active components may lead to three possible results: synergistic effect, additive effect and antagonistic effect. The compounding effect and synergistic ratio range cannot be deduced theoretically based on chemical structures or action mechanisms, and must be verified through experiments, ruling out the presumption of definite synergistic effects after simple component replacement.

The team further distinguished the technical enlightenment boundary between superordinate concepts and specific compounds. 

Countering the plaintiff’s argument that the prior art disclosure of “thiophanate + methoxyacrylate fungicides” made the combination of thiophanate with pyraclostrobin and picoxystrobin obvious, the team pointed out that methoxyacrylate represents a huge superordinate compound group with significant differences in structure, biological activity and compounding behavior among specific individual compounds. The comparative documents only disclosed experimental data of thiophanate combined with partial compounds of the category, without mentioning the compounding effects of pyraclostrobin and picoxystrobin, and therefore failed to provide technical enlightenment for the specific synergistic combination defined in the patent. Sufficient experimental data in the patent specification verified the unexpected synergistic effects within the limited ratio range, fully satisfying the statutory creativity requirements.

During the court hearing, the our team presented comprehensive arguments based on the patent text, prior art comparative documents, common technical knowledge in the pesticide industry and patent experimental data, completely refuting all the plaintiff’s litigation claims and assisting the court in ascertaining the technical facts of the case.

The Beijing Intellectual Property Court fully adopted the core defense opinions of the patentee’s legal team. The judgment clarified that in the pesticide field, even fungicides of the same category cannot guarantee predictable compounding effects or synergistic ratio ranges through theoretical deduction. The prior art neither proved the synergistic effect of replacing isothiazolinone with thiophanate, nor supported the derivation of synergistic effects of the two specific components in the patent from the compounding effects of generic category compounds. The court confirmed that the involved patent achieved unexpected synergistic effects through experimental verification, and all Claims 1 to 8 comply with the provisions of Paragraph 3, Article 22 of the Patent Law on creativity, ultimately dismissing all the plaintiff’s claims and securing a complete first-instance victory for the client.

Typical Case Significance

This case serves as a typical precedent for the creativity determination of compound pesticide composition invention patents. The judgment further clarified the judicial trial rules for pesticide compounding patents: the synergistic effect of component replacement cannot be presumed merely based on identical compound categories and similar action mechanisms; in addition, the disclosed effects of superordinate concepts in prior art cannot be directly applied to specific compounds of the same category without experimental verification, and all claimed synergistic compounding effects must be supported by valid experimental data.

T&C’s Professional Strengths

T&C has long been deeply engaged in intellectual property businesses in technology-intensive fields including chemistry, pesticides, pharmaceuticals and new materials. Our team specializes in handling complex IP cases such as patent invalidation proceedings, patent invalidation administrative litigations and patent infringement disputes. Integrating professional legal rules and technical facts, T&C provides comprehensive and high-quality intellectual property protection services for innovators and safeguards the legitimate rights and interests of technological achievements.