Xiaomi sues "Xiaomi" for infringement! Ordered 30 million yuan in damages

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According to the WeChat public account of the Guangdong Provincial Higher People's Court, Xiaomi Technology Company was awarded 30 million yuan in a recent trademark infringement lawsuit, successfully safeguarding its intellectual property rights.

The case, which was named "Xiaomi Technology Company v. Shenzhen Xiaomi Company and Other Trademark Infringement and Unfair Competition Dispute Case", was tried and judged by the Intermediate People's Court of Shenzhen Municipality, Guangdong Province.

After the establishment of Xiaomi Technology Company in 2010, Shenzhen Xiaomi Company was established in 2012, which opened a store on the Tmall platform, publicly cooperated with investors, and labeled the goods produced by others as manufacturers for external sales.

For example, Shenzhen Xiaomi Company sells 182 products such as chargers, mobile power supplies, fans, massagers and so on in the store, and the sales page is marked "Xiaomi Digital Franchise Store", of which 114 products are marked with "Xiaomi Digital Franchise Store", "Xiaomi Franchise Store" and "Xiaomi" in the sales title.

Xiaomi Technology Company claimed that the above-mentioned acts of Shenzhen Xiaomi Company constituted trademark infringement and unfair competition, and requested that Shenzhen Xiaomi Company be ordered to compensate its economic losses and reasonable rights protection costs of 30 million yuan.

The effective judgment of the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court held that the shenzhen millet company's behavior of marking "millet digital franchise store", "millet franchise store" and "millet" in the sales titles of the 114 sued goods involved in the case constituted trademark infringement, with a total sales amount of 135 million yuan, taking the profit margin of the enterprises in the same industry as a reference of 30.78%, and at the same time, according to the popularity of the trademarks involved in the case, the use methods and business methods of Shenzhen millet companies, etc., it was determined that the contribution rate of the trademarks involved in the case to the defendant's profits was 30% as appropriate.

The court held that Shenzhen Xiaomi Company knew that the trademark involved in the case was still intentionally infringing, the infringement was long, wide-ranging, large-scale, and the infringement profits were huge, and it was serious to carry out a variety of infringement acts at the same time, so it was determined that 3 times the punitive damages should be applied based on the above factors, and the amount of trademark infringement damages calculated accordingly was more than 37.4 million yuan. On this basis, after superimposing the amount of compensation and reasonable rights protection costs of the unfair competition compensation part, it has exceeded the litigation claims in this case, so the judgment fully supports Xiaomi Technology Company's application of 30 million yuan.

The case was selected as one of the six typical cases of punitive damages for intellectual property rights released for the first time by the Higher People's Court of Guangdong Province on January 14. According to the analysis of the Guangdong Higher People's Court, the typicality of the case lies in the accurate identification and determination of facts such as infringing sales and profit margins, and the effective operation of the defendant is considered when determining the contribution of the trademark to profits.

According to media reports, both parties to the case recently said that they have reached an agreement to mediate and will not appeal.

According to the 2022 National Work Plan for the Administrative Protection of Intellectual Property Rights recently issued by the State Intellectual Property Office, the mainland will continue to strictly regulate patent and trademark applications, severely crack down on irregular patent applications and bad faith trademark registrations, and improve the standard policy system for intellectual property protection. Thoroughly implement the Standards for Judging Trademark Infringement and the Standards for Judging General Trademark Violations, formulate the understanding and application of relevant standards, and promote the coordination and convergence of intellectual property enforcement standards and judicial adjudication standards.

Editor: Ya Wenhui