PRC Patent Law Article 61

Evidentiary Reversal

Procedural triggers for this rule depend on the plaintiff establishing two critical facts before the court will demand a disclosure from the defendant. First, under PRC Patent Law Article 61, the patent must be for a specific process rather than just the final design of the item. Second, the product resulting from the defendant’s work must be indistinguishable from the product resulting from the patented process.

Once these two hurdles are cleared, the legal focus flips toward the accused infringer. They must bring forward evidence such as internal recipes, factory logs or subcontracting agreements that prove they utilize a different, non-infringing path to the end result. If the defendant refuses to provide this data, the judge is legally allowed to assume the plaintiff’s claim of infringement is accurate.

This pressure encourages transparency and prevents manufacturers from hiding behind closed factory doors while siphoning value from high-tech patent holders.

Protection Scope

Statutory definitions of what constitutes a new product limit the range of disputes where this special presumption can be deployed. PRC Patent Law Article 61 only covers goods that are genuinely innovative and not merely updated versions of existing commodities. If a tool has been on the market for decades and the only new patent is for an incremental update to the process, the plaintiff must prove the breach using standard investigative techniques.

This boundary protects established industries from being harassed by competitors who use broad process patents as a pretext to look into their operational secrets. The definition of newness is usually tied to whether similar products were being sold inside the country before the patent was granted. This check ensures that the special burden of proof is reserved for cases where the secret logic of the factory floor is truly the only way to gain a market advantage.

It balances technical secrecy with the need for fair competition.

Counter Strategy

Defendant protections include the right to request court-sealed confidentiality to ensure that their trade secrets are not leaked to the plaintiff during the disclosure process. Even though PRC Patent Law Article 61 requires the manufacturer to show their process, the court recognizes that this disclosure could be commercially fatal if shared with a rival. The manufacturer can demand that only the judge and specified neutral technical experts see the details of their manufacturing logs.

If they successfully prove that their process involves a different sequence of cooling or a different catalyst, the infringement case is closed immediately. This defense relies on high-quality documentation of all factory activities over time. If a producer does not keep good records of their own independent innovation, they are highly vulnerable when this article is invoked.

The power of this specific law comes from how it targets the specific opaqueness of high-end manufacturing sites.