China’s Supreme People’s Court (SPC) on April 8, 2021 upheld a lower court ruling that Chinese adhesive manufacturer Wenzhou Xinggeng Shoe Materials Co., Ltd. (温州市星耕鞋材有限公司) was liable for infringing Italian rival ALC Tecnologie Adesive S.r.l. (ALC粘合剂技术责任有限公司)’s patent. The top court increased the damages award for ALC to 200,000 yuan ($32,000).

The case on February 28 was identified by the top court as one of the 48 representative cases of the 3,460 ones in which it issued rulings in 2021. As a guiding principle distilled by the court, the case shows that the term “use environment features” is used to describe and define the backgrounds or conditions where an invention is used in the claims of patents. According to the top court, use environment features are not limited to the technical features related to the installation position or connection structure of protected objects, but include technical features related to their usages, application methods under certain circumstances.

Turin city, Italy-based ALC was founded in 2009 and has been producing technical adhesives and tapes suited for different industries for over 20 years. Its high-tech products are popular in the high fashion footwear industry. ALC filed an application for the patent ZL200780032234.2 for a machine and method for applying an adhesive layer to a surface of an object, such as an inner sole of a shoe with the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) in 2007, which was granted by the agency in 2011.

ALC filed a lawsuit in 2018 with the Ningbo Intermediate People’s Court of Zhejiang province against Xinggeng accusing it of manufacturing and distributing machines and adhesives infringing the patent ZL200780032234.2.

Xinggeng filed a request with the CNIPA to invalidate the asserted patent in 2018. In July, 2019, the CNIPA affirmed the validity of the patent.

The trial court found for the plaintiff and ordered the defendant to pay 60,000 yuan ($9,500) in damages to the plaintiff. Both parties appealed the case to the Supreme People’s Court. The top court upheld the plaintiff’s win and awarded it 200,000 yuan ($32,000) in damages and 50,000 yuan ($7,900) in reasonable expenses.

The case docket no. is （2020）最高法知民终313号, whose English transliteration is 313, second instance (终), administrative case (行), intellectual property (知), (2020) Supreme People’s Court (（2020）最高法).