Unitalen Client NucTech Won in a Retrial Case

August 31, 2021

Brief of the Case:

In March 2017, NucTech filed a lawsuit of trademark infringement and unfair competition against Taihong Vision in the Beijing Intellectual Property Court, claiming that Taihong Vision used marks containing "威视(Weishi)" on security inspection equipment and official websites, Weibo, WeChat, and promotional materials as well as exhibitions, infringing NucTech's exclusive right to use the registered Trademarks No. 1341332 "威视(Weishi)" and No. 6989335 "威视NUCTECH and device", and that Taihong Vision’s use of "威视(Weishi)" in its company name constitutes unfair competition.

In August 2019, the Beijing Intellectual Property Court made the judgment of the first instance and determined that the defendant's production, sales, and promotion of the products involved in the case with a mark containing the words "威视(Weishi)" constituted infringements of the exclusive right to use the trademark owned by NucTech, and that the fact that the Trademark No. 12125350 " " (this trademark, in the first instance, second instance, and retrial of the administrative litigation and the procurator supervision procedure, was determined to be a similar trademark on the same or similar goods as the cited trademark of NucTech, and was invalidated in the first instance of the civil infringement litigation) of Taihong Vision was a registered trademark does not affect the determination of its infringement of the exclusive right to use the registered trademark of NucTech. In addition, security inspection equipment products with the "同方威视(NucTech)" name have already gained a certain degree of popularity and influence, and Taihong Vision's use of the words "威视(Weishi)" in its company name constitutes unfair competition. The Beijing Intellectual Property Court, based on the popularity of NucTech's "威视(Weishi)" trademark and trade name, and maliciousness of Taihong Vision, as well as other factors, determined that Taihong Vision shall compensate NucTech for economic losses and reasonable expense for a total of 3 million yuan.

Taihong Vision was dissatisfied with the above judgment of the first instance and appealed to the Beijing Higher People's Court. In October 2020, the Beijing Higher People's Court made the judgment of the second instance, rejected the appeal of Taihong Vision and upheld the judgment of the first instance.

Although Taihong Vision changed its name to TECHIK in November 2020, it was still dissatisfied with the judgment of the second instance and applied for a retrial by the Supreme People's Court. In June 2021, the Supreme People's Court upheld the determination in the judgments of the first and second instances and rejected the retrial application submitted by TECHIK.

Case Significance:

This trademark infringement and unfair competition dispute case, as well as the case of administrative dispute over the request for trademark invalidation between NucTech and TECHIK all have gone through the first instance, second instance, and retrial, and the case of administrative dispute over the request for trademark invalidation has further gone through the procurator supervision procedure. Unitalen attorneys skillfully used both the civil and administrative procedure to comprehensively crack down hard on the registered trademark " " of TECHIK, the company name containing "威视(Weishi)", and the use and promotion of marks containing the words "威视(Weishi)" in business activities, and won the cases in every procedure, effectively protected the intellectual property rights of NucTech.

 

Keywords