On Dec. 7, Quality Brands Protection Committee of China Association of Enterprises with Foreign Investment (QBPC)Automation & Electric IWG hold an IWG Sharing meeting. It was hosted by Tim Jiang, IWG coordinator (from Vertiv), and relevant lawyers were invited to share a Siemens case. 31 representatives from 17 member companies attended this event.
Tim Jiang first thanked everyone for their enthusiastic participation and expressed thanks to Leon Lv (QBPC Government Affairs and Public Policy Committee Vice Chair, from Eaton) and Li Xiaohuan (from Siemens) for contributing to the event. Leon Lv said that the case was identified in previous IWG research, and it was a pleasure to have the lawyers and Siemens representative to share their experience. Li Xiaohuan said that the sharing was not only limited to the case itself, but also would bring more ideas about product model protection in the industrial field, which might benefit all participants.
Xu Jing, Partner of King & Wood Law firm, said that there had not been many cases involving product models over the years. Neither had there been any substantive change to the thinking of court in handling the case. As a result, the Siemens case had remained as a typical case though it took place many years ago. She briefly introduced the basic situation of the case and summed up her experience in handling such cases for many years. First, the right holders and lawyers should first and foremost fully understand the product information and pass it on to the judge to improve the judge's trust. The second was to make clear the independence of the product model, emphasizing that in addition to the trademark, the product model itself also had important value. Third, in the process of safeguarding rights, the litigation should be launched in name of a variety of infringements with possibility for success simultaneously. In this case, the agent sued for both patent infringement and unfair competition, and finally won the case with unfair competition. She also said that the cost of civil action was extremely high in case of high-level imitation infringement, and criminal prosecution could be the first consideration.
Lawyer Ye Wanli next shared in detail his experience in Siemens PLC case. First, based on 29 cases in the database in which industrial product models were protected by anti-unfair competition law in the past 5 years, he summarized the characteristics of the cases in six aspects, namely time distribution, regional distribution, case trial level, winning case, award of compensation and industrial product model. Then, taking the "BK case" and "TEF case" as examples, he expounded the main challenges in the anti-unfair competition protection of industrial product models, including the proof of the popularity of the product model itself and the significant proof of the product model, and put forward suggestions on safeguarding rights and adjudicating compensation, including focusing on proving the independent value of product models, highlighting product models in routine promotion, and paying attention to the unity of subjective and objective factors in the process of safeguarding rights. Xu Jing added that the above six characteristics could help right holders to choose the jurisdiction and court for litigation, evaluate the possible outcome of the case in advance, and help right holder to make a cautious decision.
During the Q&A, the participants actively interacted with the speakers, raised many issues of common concern and received detailed feedback from the speakers, including whether the use of the same product model by multiple manufacturers in the market could prove the popularity of this model, whether the sales data of specific models could prove the popularity of the model, and the naming requirements of well-known models, etc.At the end of the meeting, Tim Jiang thanked the speakers for their wonderful presentations and the enthusiastic participation of the members while looking forward to the next meeting.