Led by Ms. Jing Xu, Mr. Jingqiang Zhang and Ms, Jing Zhong respectively, the Patent Department consists of Electrical Division, Mechanical/Design Division, Chemical/Biological Division and Litigation Division, and is responsible for legal consultation, patentability searches, disclosure review, patent evaluation, drafting, revision and translation of application documents, preparation for responses to office actions, interview with examiners, prosecution of the requests for patent reexaminations and patent invalidations, prosecution of patent infringement cases and other patent related legal services.

Many patent attorneys in the Patent Department are former patent examiners or members of the Patent Reexamination Board of the SIPO. Some of them participated in drafting the “Patent Law of the PRC”and its Implementing Regulations. Most of them previously studied and/or worked in foreign patent offices or foreign patent firms. They have extensive knowledge of patent examination and a close link with the SIPO and its patent examiners.

Most of DRAGON’s patent attorneys and technical experts hold their PhD or Master degrees in science. The majority of them have previously engaged in technical or scientific work before their being patent attorneys. Their technical expertise covers a wide range of scientific and technological disciplines including electronics, telecommunication, network, computer, automation, semiconductor, electric engineering, biological engineering, pharmaceutics and traditional mechanical and chemical engineering etc.

With the strong background in science and extensive experience and skill accumulated in the prosecution of numerous patent applications, DRAGON’s patent attorneys have superior abilities to quickly and accurately understand the innovating science and technology, and the abilities to profoundly understand the SIPO patent examination requirements regarding novelty, inventiveness and practical applicability of inventions. These abilities ensure the high quality of application documents drafted or prepared by DRAGON’s attorneys, guarantee the full and accurate disclosure of the inventions in the drafted specifications, and assure that the extent of the patent protection asked for by the drafted claims is as wide as possible. DRAGON’s patent attorneys can well challenge any unfavorable opinions put forwarded by the SIPO examiners during the procedures of substantial examination. They can timely conduct interviews and exchange opinions with the SIPO examiners to get the most up-dated information concerning the examination requirements, provide the applicants with their valuable and feasible advices, and submit high quality responses to office actions by skillfully amending the claims and/or arguing against the rejections. A unique policy of letting applicants well understand the opinions of the examiners by providing them with the text of the office actions having been translated into their native language also enables a close cooperation between DRAGON’s attorneys and the applicants during the whole process of responding to the office actions. The professional efforts made by DRAGON’s attorneys are usually rewarded by the final grant of the patent in the most applications filed by DRAGON, therefore, the interests of the applicants can be protected to the greatest possible degree.

Most of patent attorneys of the Patent Department have personally prosecuted hundreds of patent applications entrusted by our foreign clients. They are very skillful in translating, searching and understanding foreign patent application documents. The patent application documents translated into or prepared in Chinese by DRAGON’s patent attorneys are distinguished by their accuracy, fluency, linguistic appropriateness and faultlessness, which has earned DRAGON numerous praises and credit from our long-lasting foreign clients and business partners.

DRAGON’s patent attorneys working on the patent reexamination, invalidation and infringement cases are those known as the top-ranking IP experts in China. In the past several years, they successfully won a number of widely watched IP cases including the case of invalidating the patent owned by US Pfizer Inc. on the use of sildenafil citrate, the active ingredient of the erectile-dysfunction drug “Viagra”. A unique combination team of patent attorneys with experiences as former SIPO examiners and attorneys at law with backgrounds in science enables DRADON to achieve winning rate in IP litigation cases as high as 80% in recent years.

DRAGON’s several patent attorneys have been regarded as the top-ranking experts in handling design patent litigation cases owing to their uniquely extensive experience accumulated in the prosecution of numerous design patent invalidation and infringement cases. Some of them are former SIPO examiners for design patent, and others are former members of the Patent Reexamination Board of the SIPO. In the past two years, our foreign and domestic clients have entrusted more than a hundred of design patent invalidation and infringement cases to DRAGON. Under the guidance or with the participation of DRAGON’s top-ranking experts in this field, DRAGON’s patent attorneys demonstrated their excellent capabilities in making the judgment of identicalness and similarity of the designs, and their great abilities to make strong arguments in the oral hearings and at court. They have successfully won most of the cases entrusted to DRAGON.