Senior partner of Tahota Law Firm Yingmei Han and full-time lawyer Yun Zhang (from Beijing Office) were the attorney agents of Lier Chemical Limited Liability Company (hereafter referred to as Lier Chemical, a listed company in Shenzhen Stock Exchange with the share code of 002258) in the lawsuit with a former employee about patent award and reward. After the trial in Sichuan Mianyang City Intermediate People's Court, the former employee’s request that Lier Chemical should pay him 33 million as patent award and reward was rejected.

This lawsuit was complex and concerned a large sum of money. There were such questions as how to make clear the patent reward contractual way in technology development agreement, whether the company regulations are still suitable if the way is not clear, whether the regulations are legal without discussing by the workers’ congress and labor union, whether the staff are aware of the regulations, whether only technology innovations but not patents or patent rewards are included in the regulations, whether to understand “bonus” as position invention award or patent reward, how to include patent invention as a new part of regulation, whether the money paid before regulations can be regarded as patent reward, how to calculate patent reward, what is the role of patent invention in the whole engineering process, what is the relationship between the stock right given as stock ownership incentive and patent reward, what is the connection between profits gained by selling shares on a secondary market and patent reward, what is the prescribed period for litigation and how to understand rationality of patent reward payment written in patent laws.

Tahota lawyers worked hard and made clear all the facts through careful legal analysis. The Court agreed with the agents’ opinions and rejected the requirement of the former employee.