Guangdong High Awards Turkish Firm 1M Yuan over Trademark Infringement

文章来源: CHINA INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY NEWS
发布时间: 2018/3/14 11:04:00

 

  Recently, Guangdong High People's Court rendered its second-instance ruling over a trademark infringement and unfair competition case lodged by Turky-based ZER Central Trading Company against Zhongshan Ouboer Company, determining that Ouboer had infringed the exclusive right of ZER's BEKO trademark, and upped the damages from 100,000 yuan (first-instance decision) to 1 million yuan.


  ZER is a registrant of five "BEKO" trademarks including No. 1301945 and No. 1323880. Except for No. 1323880 trademark, the other four trademarks were certified to be used on home appliances with a focus on kitchen appliances. With the permission of ZER, the BEKO brand has received become popular in China after constant promotion and operation by Changzhou Beike Company and Shanghai Beike Company from 2009 to 2014.


  Zhongshan Ouboer Company, founded on June 7, 2010, is a company that engages in production and distribution of home appliances, hardware accessories, and electronic products. In July and August 2010 respctively, the company registered two domain names, obeko.cn and o-beko.com to sell small household appliances. In addition, the company also promoted home appliances with the logo "O-BEKO" on the website.


  ZER then filed a lawsuit with Guangzhou Intermediate People's Court, accusing Ouboer of infringing its trademark and constituting unfair competition.


  After hearing, Guangzhou Intermediate People's Court held that ZER's BEKO  trademark constituted the main part of the two demain names in dispute, namely "obeko" and "o-beko" In parallel, the logo  "O-BEKO"  was used on the products similar as those in BEKO's certified classes, Class 7 and Class 11. In this connection, transactions of relevant products through the above two domain names on the website infringed the exclusive right of ZER, and it uses the similar  logo as ZER company's registered trademark "BEKO" on the same or similar goods also infringed ZER's registered trademark exclusive rights.


  The court then ordered Ouboer to pay 100,000 yuan in damages., But both the two parties refused to call it a day and brought the case to the Guangdong High People's Court.


  Guangdong High held that Ouboer's usage of "O-BEKO" logos infringes ZER's trademark rights, and Ouboer's usage of "O-beko" in its English company name constitutes unfair competition. In addition, Ouboer announced on its website multiple times that its annual sales reveunes were between 5-10 million U.S. dollars, and even ever reached 50-100 million U.S dollars. Considering all these facts, the court ordered Ouboer to pay 1 million yuan in damages for ZER's economic loss. (by Jiang Xu)





  (Editor Li Xingyi)


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