On the afternoon of March 9, QBPC Best Practices/Enforcement Committee (BPEC) held the Online Case Study of Typical Infringer in the Industry Shared by Bitzer & Emerson. Recently, the successful case of protecting the rights of the packaging and decoration of the famous products of Bitzer has attracted widespread attention by QBPC members. Thereby BPEC invited Zhang Zhen from Bitzer and Frank Liu from Emerson to share their hard-won battle against the same infringer. Nearly 70 QBPC members attended the meeting.
First of all, Zhang Zhen briefly introduced the company and the two most "preferred" compressor products by the copycats and shared the typical case of "Battlefield of Anti-Unfair Competition in Industrial Section" in detail. According to her, it had become a normal phenomenon for the manufacture, seller and distributors to jointly conduct various unfair competition conducts in the industrial sector while trademark infringement no longer played the major role. Zhang shared the highlights and insights of the case mainly from three aspects: evidence collection & presenting and demonstration for trade-dress claim; demonstration of joint infringement; compensation amount claim. Finally, as a follow-up of this case, she expected to discuss the future development of industrial product infringement as well as the administrative investigation and handling of unfair competition with QBPC members, which would eventually help more right holders in similar situation to hit the road of defending their rights through this sharing.
Next, Frank Liu shared Emerson's experience of fighting with the same "star" infringer for more than ten years. Based on the interaction between Emerson and the infringer, he analyzed the evolution of the infringer's behavior at different stages, from simple to complex, from trademark infringement to unfair competition, and from brands to technologies. In conclusion, he said that industrial products had a long life cycle in the market, and many design patents, even if registered, might have expired by the time that the infringement occurred, so packaging and decoration protection for well-known goods might be a good solution.
Zhang Zhen added that she appreciated the good foundation established by Emerson in the early stage, which enabled the two companies to successfully join hands to crack down on typical infringing parties in the industry and create strong deterrence. She also invited QBPC members to discuss how to crack down on unfair competition practices, which had not been awarded in, through administrative investigation and punishment.
As the moderator, Peter Yang thanked the guest speakers for their wonderful sharing. He said that the case study was informative and insightful. The two companies had been continuously and effectively monitoring the same "star-level" infringer in the industry for many years, and had been fighting for many rounds, and their successful experience was worth learning from. He looked forward to more classic cases shared with all members in the future.
