Paragraph 1 of Article 8 of "Several Provisions of the Supreme People's Court on the Applicable Law in the Trial of Patent Disputes" stipulates: "If the plaintiff files a lawsuit for infringement of the patent right of utility model, it shall produce a search report made by the patent administrative department of the State Council at the time of prosecution." This judicial interpretation is mainly aimed at the suspension of patent infringement litigation caused by the defendant's declaration of patent invalidation. Therefore, the search report is only the preliminary evidence of the effectiveness of the utility model patent right, and it is not the condition for the plaintiff to file an infringement lawsuit on the utility model patent. The meaning of "should" in judicial interpretation is to emphasize the strict implementation of this system and prevent it from being too loose to make it meaningless. The people's court shall accept all cases that meet the conditions for prosecution stipulated in Article 108 of the Civil Procedure Law.
However, if the plaintiff insists on not issuing a search report, and the defendant requests to declare the patent right of utility model invalid during the defense period, and there are no other circumstances that cannot suspend the lawsuit, the people's court shall suspend the lawsuit. After the revision of the new law, it is clear that the parties concerned, the people's courts and the departments in charge of patent work can be required to submit patent evaluation reports as evidence for hearing and handling patent infringement disputes.