Chinese Tech Firm Wins Complete Victory in US Patent Litigation

A cross-border patent lawsuit lasting nearly three years has ended in a complete victory for a Chinese technology company, The Paper reported on October 6, 2026. Gongjing Technology (Jiaxing) Co., Ltd. prevailed in its US patent dispute with Japan's Kaneka Corporation, after the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York invalidated the asserted core patent claims and rejected Kaneka's infringement allegations in full. The win removes the intellectual property obstacle facing the company's domestic reduced coenzyme Q10 products entering the US market.

In October 2023, Kaneka sued Gongjing Technology in the Eastern District of New York, alleging that the company's flagship reduced CoQ10 product CrysQnol (formerly branded Crystal QH) infringed claims 5 and 15 of its US Patent 7,829,080. The case was a professional contest over core technical validity and the boundaries of patent rights, directly determining whether the company's self-developed products could access the US market. Facing high legal costs and commercial pressure from hesitant US partners, the company evaluated settlement options but ultimately chose to defend itself through the US judicial process.

Kaneka's asserted claims concerned reduced CoQ11, a natural impurity in reduced CoQ10, arguing that any amount of the ingredient could stabilize reduced CoQ10. Under the defense's effective challenge, the court focused on the technical effect and its basis, finding that Kaneka had failed to prove it possessed technology and scientific evidence matching the claim scope when it filed the patent application in 2007, and that the disclosed embodiments could not support such a broad claim scope. After detailed fact-finding, expert evidence and multiple rounds of legal and technical argument, the court declared the two asserted claims invalid for lack of utility, insufficient disclosure and non-enablement.

A company representative said the dispute concerned the international fair-competition rights of its self-developed technology rather than a simple cost-benefit calculation, adding that the firm chose to compete within the international rules system instead of avoiding it. Industry observers describe the outcome as a landmark for Chinese functional-ingredient makers defending their rights in the United States, marking a shift from passive response to proactive, rule-based engagement in overseas IP disputes. With the judgment in place, the IP risks for CrysQnol's US expansion are cleared, and the company says it will continue clinical research and global IP layout for the product.

Original Link: https://m.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_34204216