Recently, the competition between Gree and Oaks in the home appliance industry can be described as a fire and water, and the reason is nothing more than who infringed on whose patent rights, but this time it is different, because the patents claimed by Oaks have been used in the country for nearly 19 years.
The name of the patent is called the air conditioning compressor patent, the earliest is actually the Japanese company Toshiba, in 1999 developed and applied, when Oaks was only founded for 13 years.
After successful research and development, Toshiba applied for a patent in 2000 and officially licensed it to all home appliance companies in China on August 11 of the same year.
At that time, the license period was agreed in August 2019, which means that Toshiba's patent has been used in the Chinese market for nearly 19 years.
And what does all this have to do with Oakes?
It turned out that in December 2018, when the patented technology was about to expire in 8 months, Oaks quickly bought the patented technology.
It is reasonable to say that after this general technology is bought, Oaks should negotiate head-on with other companies and decide whether to renew the patent.
However, a month after buying the next month, Oaks actually filed a lawsuit against Gree in January 2019, claiming that Gree infringed its technology patent rights.
In this way, everyone understands that the reason why Oaks has worked a patent that is about to expire is entirely to let Gree fall into the dilemma of patent infringement.
The reason why Oaks wants to do this is because of a litigation war in 2018, on June 17, 2018, just when Oaks was actively preparing for the upcoming home appliance sales boom, a Gree whistleblower letter came unexpectedly, in which Gree accused Oaks of stealing the company's patents and demanded that Oaks compensate 40 million yuan for losses.
After passing the judgment, Oaks was forced to pay Gree 40 million yuan, and the loss of money was small, and the impact on the enterprise was large, Oaks not only lost the sales performance in the second half of the year, but even the image of the company plummeted.
Obviously, Oakes bought the Toshiba patent and quickly demanded compensation from Gree in order to retaliate for what Gree had done before, otherwise why did Oaks not seek compensation from other brands such as Midea?
On December 8 this year, Oaks once again filed a complaint against Gree on this issue, and the local court in Ningbo also ruled on the case, because Toshiba's patent had indeed been bought by Oaks, and Oaks did not authorize a patent for Gree, which meant that Gree did infringe Oaks' patent to a certain extent, so Gree wanted to give Oaks 167 million yuan.
In this regard, on December 8 this year, Gree publicly responded that it is only the first trial of the case, Gree will not give up the opportunity to appeal, and the company's current technical assessment has concluded that it does not infringe any rights of Oaks.
It is not difficult to imagine that the lawsuits of Oakes and Gree will continue to be fought.
Although the two companies are in full swing, but it seems that no one is reasonable, Oaks bought the patent and quickly changed his face, not giving other companies any opportunities, which is obviously using the patent to make a fuss.
Gree has not made a timely response to patents, and it is still in a state of shelving after nearly two years, which is not the attitude that should be used to solve the problem.
In fact, if it is investigated to the source, it is still because the domestic patent technology system still has a large room for improvement, if there is a clear document stipulation, the situation that the two major appliance companies are in court will not happen.
According to Gree's previous competitive situation with Oaks, Gree is afraid that it will not pay this compensation to Oaks, and the patent litigation war between the two companies will continue.
However, it is worth noting that at present, Oaks has slowly slipped out of the high-end home appliance market because of perennial low-price competition, and the minimum price of one of its air conditioners has reached less than 1500 yuan this year.
Low profitability is bound to make Oaks miss large-scale research and development investment in patents, and if Oaks only wants to defeat Gree through patent litigation and then enter the high-end market, this is obviously unrealistic.
In the future, will Gree be able to win this lawsuit with Oaks, and what kind of development and new changes will Oakes have after experiencing this lawsuit? Do you have any good opinions?