The "Interpretation of the Supreme People’s Court on the Application of Punitive Damages in the Trial of Civil Cases of Infringement of Intellectual Property Rights" was released on March 3. In order to accurately understand and apply the "Interpretation" and ensure the correct implementation of the punitive damages system, the "Typical cases of punitive damages of Civil Infringement of Intellectual Property Rights" is hereby issued.
⑥ Trademark infringement dispute case between OPPLE Company and Huasheng Company
【Case basics】
OPPLE Company is the right holder of the registered trademark "
" "OPPLE", and the approved products are lamps, fluorescent tubes, etc. The registered trademark of "
" has been recognized as a famous trademark in Guangdong Province for many times, and was recognized as a well-known trademark in China in 2007. Huasheng uses signs such as "
", "
", "
" and "
" on its desk lamps, night lights and other lamp products and related promotional webpages, and sells them and promises to sell them on major physical supermarkets and Tmall websites. The lighting products produced by Huasheng Company were punished by the administrative agency for substandard quality.
OPPLE Company sued to the court, requested that Huasheng Company constituted an infringement, and punitive damages should be applied to compensate its economic losses and reasonable expenses of 3 million yuan. Both the court of first instance and the court of second instance held that Huasheng Company did not constitute trademark infringement and did not support its claims. The Guangdong Provincial High People’s Court held that the trademark requested by OPPLE Company was highly distinctive and had reached a well-known level. The accused logo used by Huasheng Company in its lamp products constituted a similar mark to OPPLE’s trademark involved. If it constitutes confusion, it should be determined to constitute trademark infringement. As a business in the same industry, Huasheng Co., Ltd. knows that OPPLE and its trademarks enjoy a relatively high reputation, and knows that the "OPPLE" trademark has been rejected in the case of the registration application for lamp products. The "OUPUTE" trademark is registered in other categories and used on lighting products, mass production and sales of infringing products, and the product quality is substandard, the subjective malicious infringement of OPPLE's trademark rights is obvious, and the circumstances are serious, and punitive damages should be applied. Therefore, the compensation base was determined at 1,277,500 yuan based on the license fee of the trademark involved and the duration of the infringement, and considering the subjective maliciousness of Huasheng Company and the nature, circumstances and consequences of the infringement, it was determined based on three times the compensation base of the amount of compensation.
【Typical Significance】
The retrial judgment of this case clarified the rule boundaries and certification standards of the "on request principle", "subjective malice" and "serious circumstances" in the application of punitive damages for intellectual property rights, and proposed the method and path to refine calculations to determine the "base" and "multiples" of the amount of compensation, which have important guiding value for the application of law. The case won the first prize of the "National Court System 2020 Excellent Case Analysis Selection" and the second prize of the "Fourth National Intellectual Property Outstanding Judgment Document".
