In September last year, NIO entered the European market, including the ET7, ET5 and ES7 will all be introduced, but in the local area, the ES7 has been renamed EL7, which is related to a previous Audi lawsuit.
This follows a months-long dispute between the two brands, after Audi took NIO to court in October 2021 alleging that NIO had infringed Audi's trademark rights, and Audi said that NIO's decision to name the two models ES6 and ES8 infringed the trademark rights of the two Audi models, the S6 and S8, before an Audi spokesperson confirmed the lawsuit.
According to the plan, the verdict will be issued after the May 2022 hearing, but it has been postponed several times for various reasons, and now, after 15 months, the verdict has finally been pronounced: the local district court agreed to Audi's lawsuit, and Audi initially won the case.
In its statement of award, the court stated: "Although the addition of the letters 'E' to the defendant's logo is clearly different in words and sounds from the plaintiff's marks 'S6' and 'S8', however, in this case, the addition of the letters 'E' does not provide sufficient distinction, which would entail an indirect risk of confusion, given the average distinctiveness of the mark and the existing characteristics of the goods, which are interrelated, at least in terms of sound." "
The Chamber further explained: "Many people will regard the only difference between the two logos, 'E', as merely an indication of the type of engine of the vehicle, and consumers will consider the 'ES6' to be an electric version of the 'S6', and then consider the two vehicles to be from the same manufacturer." "
After the verdict, NIO will be banned from advertising ES6 and ES8 models in Germany, of course, these two cars have not entered the local market, and the ES7 that has been entered has also been replaced by EL7, presumably when the subsequent ES8 and ES6 are launched, it will also be renamed EL8 and EL6.
