The Highest Compensation Judge on Trademark Civil Infringement Made by Beijing Intellectual Property Court (Nov-2016)

Beijing Intellectual Property Court issued a typical case relating to a dispute on exclusive right of a registered trademark on November 18, and ruled that the defendant should pay the plaintiff ten million (RMB) to cover the plaintiff’s economical loss and reasonable expenses.

The plaintiff China Meichao Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as the Meichao Group) sued the Beijing Xiu Jie New Construction Materials Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Xiu Jie Co.) of infringing exclusive right of Meichao Group’s registered trademark. The plaintiff Meichao Group holds the exclusive right of the registered trademark “Qiang Gu” used on ‘industrial adhesives and glue” which enjoyed a high market reputation. The defendant arbitrarily without consent used the words “Xiu Jie Qiang Gu”, “Yi Kang Qiang Gu” and “Xing Chao Qiang Gu” on prominent positions of its products of the same classification on sale, which had constituted infringement.

Based on the evidences provided by the both parties, the Court ruled that “Qiang Gu” was not a conventionalized and common name for said industry; however, the Xiu Jie Co. used said words of big size on prominent positions of the barrels belonged to usage as a trademark, which infringed the exclusive right of the plaintiff Meichao Group.

The amount of the compensation is the highest for a case in the trademark civil infringement made by the Beijing Intellectual Property Court ever since its establishment; in order to truly protect the initiatives of the originators, it can be expected in the future that the court will continuously strengthen the protection to the intellectual property so as to have the amount of compensation fit in with the market value of the intellectual property.

(Source: Xin Hua News Agency-China court net)