This patent infringement civil case was heard by Nanjing Intermediate People’s Court in 2025, involving invention patent dispute of new‑energy charging pile control modules. The actual manufacturer with production lines, technical teams and R&D capacity is anonymised as Pulse Power Technology Co., Ltd. The plaintiff is a new‑energy high‑tech enterprise, Nova Energy Co., Ltd, holding a valid Chinese invention patent for intelligent charging‑pile control circuit modules. The patent had survived multiple invalidation proceedings and maintained stable patent validity.
Starting from mid‑2023, Nova Energy discovered multiple government bidding projects and commercial engineering procurement projects adopting charging‑pile products that fully reproduced all technical features of its invention patent. When reviewing bidding documents, project contracts, delivery receipts and official invoices, the plaintiff only found four newly‑established special‑purpose project companies: Alpha Project Engineering, Beta System Integration, Gamma Construction Solutions and Delta Energy Contracting. None of the bidding documents, product nameplates, delivery documents or VAT invoices contained any reference to Pulse Power Technology Co., Ltd. All public materials presented these four project‑oriented entities as independent engineering contractors responsible for product procurement, project delivery and after‑sales service.
The plaintiff initially filed patent‑infringement lawsuits only against these four nominal project defendants. During litigation preparation, the legal team quickly identified critical risks. Each special‑purpose project company was established shortly before corresponding bidding tenders, with low registered capital, no factory buildings, no R&D personnel and no electronic‑product manufacturing equipment. Their corporate bank accounts only received project progress payments and paid out project‑related costs. If the court only imposed liability on these temporary project shell entities, the real manufacturer Pulse Power Technology would escape civil compensation, even if the plaintiff obtained a winning judgment. After completing a single bidding project, these shell companies could easily go dormant or apply for deregistration, leaving almost no enforceable assets for enforcement proceedings.
The plaintiff’s IP counsel formed a core litigation strategy: in patent infringement disputes arising from government and commercial bidding projects, contract‑signing project entities are frequently special‑purpose shells. Right holders cannot simply take bidding‑party information as the real infringing manufacturer. The litigation priority was to collect multi‑source circumstantial evidence connecting four project shell companies with Pulse Power Technology, the concealed actual manufacturer.
With court‑ordered evidence preservation, multiple groups of evidence were obtained. First, product teardown forensic inspection: firmware internal metadata, hardware serial number coding rules and component batch marking on infringing charging‑pile products all matched the production management system of Pulse Power Technology. The four project companies never engaged in hardware production or firmware development. Second, industrial‑and‑commercial investigation showed that four project shell companies adopted nominee shareholders and nominal legal representatives. Their enterprise registration contact persons, fixed business telephones and technical‑support email addresses all belonged to Pulse Power Technology’s internal staff. Third, forensic financial audit reports submitted to the court restored complete capital flow paths: project funds flowed into four project‑company accounts, then funds were transferred out under payment items labelled “technical service fee”, “system integration expense” and “equipment customisation charge”, and finally remitted to Pulse Power Technology’s main corporate account. Masked fund settlement under the guise of technical‑service transactions is vital evidence for Chinese courts to identify joint patent‑infringement relationships between project shells and hidden manufacturing enterprises. Besides financial evidence, preserved internal enterprise chat records showed Pulse Power’s management explicitly instructed employees: “Set‑up independent project companies for each bidding tender. Use these project entities to sign all project contracts. Never disclose our factory name in bidding materials. If one project company gets sued, we can abandon that shell and establish new special‑purpose entities for subsequent bidding projects.” This written record directly proved that creating multiple project‑oriented shell companies was pre‑arranged risk‑evading behaviour rather than normal project‑division business arrangement.
In court hearings, four nominal project companies argued they were merely engineering integrators purchasing finished equipment from unknown external suppliers, and they had no technical knowledge about the internal circuit patent scheme. Pulse Power Technology denied any substantive cooperative relationship, asserting it only provided ordinary technical consulting services for project companies and should not bear tort liability for patent infringement.
After cross‑examining electronic forensic results, financial audit reports, bidding archives and corporate registration materials, the court delivered key factual findings. First, four special‑purpose project shell companies possessed no R&D capacity, production workshops or hardware‑processing capability. Their sole objective was to sign bidding project contracts and serve as risk‑insulation vehicles for Pulse Power Technology. Second, strict personnel correlation, unified business control and disguised fund transfer existed between Pulse Power Technology and four project‑oriented shell entities. Nominal shareholders and legal representatives only collected small agency remuneration and held no actual decision‑making power over technology, procurement or capital disposition. Third, the charging‑pile products delivered in each bidding project fully fell within the protection scope of the plaintiff’s invention patent, and the whole infringement arrangement demonstrated obvious subjective bad faith.
Applying China’s Patent Law, Civil Code tort‑liability provisions and Company Law personality‑denial judicial doctrines, the court ruled that Pulse Power Technology Co., Ltd and four project shell companies should bear joint and several civil liability for patent infringement. Total compensation reached RMB 2.48 million, covering the patentee’s economic losses, notarisation fees, product forensic appraisal fees and attorney‑fee reasonable expenses. A permanent injunction ordered all defendants to cease manufacturing, selling and offering for sale charging‑pile products falling within the disputed patent protection scope.
This case provides valuable practical lessons for patentees facing patent infringement in bidding‑project scenarios. Right holders should not rely exclusively on bidding‑contract counterpart information to identify real manufacturing infringers. It is critical to apply to courts for evidence preservation covering product internal metadata, project fund flows and enterprise‑internal communication records. For new‑energy, municipal‑engineering and infrastructure‑related patent litigation, special‑purpose bidding project companies deserve high vigilance. Even if multiple independent project entities sign contracts, underlying manufacturing sources may originate from one concealed actual infringer. Collecting hardware‑forensic evidence is often decisive for breaking through the disguise of project‑shell corporate structures.
1.China Judgments Online official civil verdict database: https://wenshu.court.gov.cn/
2.CNIPA official patent retrieval and inquiry portal: https://cpquery.cponline.cnipa.gov.cn/
3.Supreme People’s Court Intellectual Property Court typical patent cases: https://ipc.court.gov.cn/
4.WIPO‑LEX English text of China Patent Law: https://www.wipo.int/wipolex/en/legislation/details/21066
