On April 19th, the first training session of the patent series was successfully held in King&Capital Law Firm. The theme of this activity was “Intellectual Property Due Diligence in Investment and Mergers and Acquisitions”, which was lectured by Mr. Yang Yi, and talked by Mr. Jin Fenghua and Mr. Su Wen.
Mr. Yang firstly gave an overview of intellectual property due diligence from the aspects of preparation stage, investigators, basic principles, due diligence methodology, due diligence scope, etc., especially emphasizing that the preliminary communication needs to be based on the client's budget for the development of the plan, and the investigators need to have a professional background in intellectual property rights, as well as legal background and industry background. Mr. Yang talked about the common points and differences between intellectual property due diligence and traditional due diligence, especially in the process of investment and financing, when intellectual property assets account for a large proportion or even as the core assets, the main concern of the investor to carry out intellectual property due diligence.
Mr. Yang Yi
Next, Mr. Yang combined with the cases of IPO on the Science and Technology Innovation Board (STB) in recent years that encountered obstacles due to patent issues, and explained the practical experience of patent due diligence investigation in several aspects, such as the basic situation, application situation, protection situation, and management situation. With respect to patent protection, Mr. Yang focused on the due diligence practice in the dimensions of patent layout, scope of patent rights, stability of patent rights, FTO of important products, patent infringement lawsuits and invalidation, which is also the most beneficial investigation content for the client to judge the legal risk and commercial value in the patent due diligence process and then to make investment decisions. Mr. Yang also shared the due diligence investigation of trade secrets, especially technical secrets, in terms of the scope of confidentiality and effective carrier, not known to the public, commercial value, confidentiality measures, external operations, and reverse engineering considerations. Finally, Mr. Yang briefly introduced trademark due diligence and copyright due diligence.
Mr. Jin Fenghua said that the intellectual property due diligence will be involved in the financing and IPO stage of the science and innovation enterprises, and the lawyers can intervene and respond to the situation as early as possible, and plan and lay out in advance. Particular attention should be paid to patent ownership, as well as possible patent invalidation and patent infringement disputes, and also to the whole industry and competitors. At the same time, it is also necessary to pay attention to the risk of due diligence, as well as the basis of the investigation.
Mr. Su Wen talked about the situation where the target company contributes with patents, in addition to the execution of regular due diligence projects, it is also necessary to investigate whether the target company also owns the series of patents of the contributed patents, as well as the patent layout of the target company's competitors, in order to reduce the risk of implementation of the contributed patents.
Speeches by interviewees
Participants expressed their own views, and the atmosphere of the free discussion session was warm and interactive.
The patent training series was co-initiated by six attorneys of King&Capital who are also licensed as attorneys and patent agents, namely, Mr. Chen Changhui, Mr. Jin Fenghua, Mr. Su Wen, Mr. Zhao Hongying, Mr. Yang Qian and Mr. Wang Xiaoshi. The King&Capital patent attorney team has different scientific and technical professional backgrounds, and can provide all-round patent legal services for clients in different industries and fields.
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