600 million fine to patent victory: start the industry's intellectual property defense war

On April 26th, we celebrate the 25th World Intellectual Property Day.

 While intellectual property protection is becoming increasingly popular and corporate awareness is constantly improving, there are still malicious counterfeiting, infringement, and free riding chaos in the market, disrupting market order and damaging the innovation drive of enterprises and consumer rights.

 Multiple companies have taken the initiative to protect their rights under the protection of the law, launched a battle to defend intellectual property rights, and injected legal momentum into fair competition in the industry.

Multiple companies win rights protection

Co building an innovative moat for the industry

The LEGO intellectual property rights protection case has been selected as a typical case.

 Starting from the victory of the 'Le Pin' infringement of the 'LEGO' brand toy copyright case, the LEGO Group has continuously won victories in intellectual property protection cases.

 In the 'Le Pin' case, the defendants Li and 9 others, with the purpose of profit, established a toy production factory without the permission of the copyright owner by dismantling and researching, computer modeling, copying drawings, and entrusting others to make molds. They copied and distributed Lego's copyrighted art works, and sold them online and offline under the 'Le Pin' brand. All of these actions constitute the crime of copyright infringement and are sentenced to imprisonment for three to six years and fined RMB 200000 to 90 million. This case was selected as one of the top ten typical cases of intellectual property infringement crimes jointly released by the Shanghai Third Intermediate People's Court and the Shanghai Third Branch of the People's Procuratorate.

 Last year, the Third Intermediate People's Court of Shanghai imposed a fine of 600 million yuan on Lego Group for the copyright infringement case of 'Longteng', and sentenced the main offenders to eight and nine years in prison respectively. This case has become the largest copyright infringement case in China and has also been selected as one of the top ten typical cases of intellectual property in Shanghai in 2024.

Stokke defends the value of design innovation through legal means.

 Recently, Nordic high-end baby and children's brand Stokke discussed Tripp Trapp

 The original design of the Growth Chair has won the final lawsuit for rights protection.

 The final judgment of the court confirms that some counterfeit Tripp Traps are available on the market

 The product of the growth chair constitutes unfair competition behavior, and the relevant parties are ordered to stop sales and compensate for economic losses.

 This verdict not only reaffirms Tripp Trapp

 As a classic design, the originality and uniqueness of the growth chair also reflect Stokke's firm stance of serving users with original design and protecting brand and consumer rights through legal means.

Pok é mon has won its first case of rights protection in China, rejecting the 'appropriation mentality'.

 In July 2015, a mobile game called 'Pocket Monsters: Remake' was launched.

 This game is highly similar to the Pok é mon series in terms of core elements such as characters, maps, stories, and gameplay, and even uses words such as 'classic replica', 'highly restored', and 'authorized' in its promotion, misleading a large number of players.

 The cumulative revenue of the game exceeded 300 million yuan in the first year after its launch, and behind its huge commercial benefits is a serious infringement of the copyright of the Pok é mon series of games.

 In December 2021, the world's top gaming and anime IP Pok é mon filed a lawsuit with the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court, demanding that the defendant, a company in Guangzhou, and several other companies stop infringing and compensate for economic losses of 500 million yuan.

 In July 2024, after trial, the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court ruled in favor of Baokemeng Company in the first instance. The defendant, a company in Guangzhou, compensated for economic losses and reasonable rights protection fees of 107 million yuan, and the other companies were jointly liable for compensation.

Spin Master cooperated with the Lianyungang police to successfully solve the toy counterfeiting case of 'Wangwang Squad Making Great Contributions'.

 In 2024, Spin Master received multiple consumer complaints about low-priced and questionable quality plastic toy car sets on some e-commerce platforms.

 After careful comparison, the company confirmed that these toys are counterfeit products, with unclear packaging printing and rough details, as well as a lack of necessary 3C certification marks, posing serious quality issues and safety hazards.

 In response, the Lianyungang police acted quickly and closely cooperated with Spin Master to carry out cross provincial joint law enforcement in Zhongshan, Guangdong, Lianyungang, Jiangsu, Yingtan, Jiangxi and other places.

 After in-depth investigation, the police successfully identified the producers and sellers of counterfeit toys and arrested them in one fell swoop.

 More than 1300 counterfeit Wangwang toys, 45 sets of injection molds, and several sets of counterfeit tools such as color box printing plates and knife molds were seized on site, completely cutting off the production and sales chain of this counterfeit toy.

Erchao likes to win the case of 'shell swapping' infringement, and the court will award compensation and pursue full chain responsibility.

 Recently, Shantou Erchaoxi Intelligent Technology Industrial Co., Ltd. won a patent infringement case.

 The Guangzhou Intellectual Property Court has ruled that the defendant, a toy factory in Chenghai District, Shantou City, shall immediately cease manufacturing and selling a utility model patent product named 'A Deformable Combination Toy' with patent number 202020718993.7 that infringes upon the plaintiff's rights. The defendant shall destroy the inventory of infringing products, semi-finished products, and special molds used to manufacture infringing products, and shall jointly compensate for economic losses and reasonable rights protection fees.

Suggestions for Enterprises to Address Intellectual Property Strategies

Jointly promote high-quality and healthy development of the industry

Registration and confirmation of rights.

 Firstly, patent protection is applied for immediately after core technology and innovative design, and global patent layout is carried out.

 Secondly, trademark protection involves registering trademarks as early as possible to cover core brand names

 LOGO、

 Domain names and other categories can be registered in multiple categories to prevent unauthorized registration.

 Finally, copyright registration and trade secret protection should be carried out for original works such as software, design drawings, and promotional content. The copyright ownership of employee/outsourced works should be clarified, and confidentiality measures should be taken for commercial information.

Internal management: prevent leakage and infringement risks.

 Establish an IP management system, set up an intellectual property department or hire professional consultants (such as patent agents and lawyers).

 Strengthen employee and partner management, sign confidentiality agreements and non compete agreements to prevent core technology leakage.

 Suppliers/partners are audited to ensure that they do not infringe on third-party IPs. The R&D process is protected, laboratory records, code repositories, etc. are managed with hierarchical permissions, and timestamps are used to prove innovation time points.

External monitoring: Proactively defend against infringement.

 Market monitoring, regularly checking whether there are counterfeit products on e-commerce platforms and social media.

 Pay attention to trademark announcements to prevent others from registering similar trademarks.

 Legal measures should be taken to deal with infringement, such as sending a lawyer's letter warning, requesting the removal of infringing products or cessation of use.

 Prevent infringement through administrative complaints, civil litigation, criminal reporting, and other means.

In summary, the protection of intellectual property is not a single legal issue, but a systematic engineering involving corporate strategy, research and development management, and market operations.

 Enterprises should establish a full chain protection mechanism of 'prevention+monitoring+rights protection' to ensure that innovative achievements are transformed into sustainable competitive advantages.

On World Intellectual Property Day, the China Toy and Baby Products Association calls on the entire industry to jointly build an innovative defense line, attach importance to IP compliance operation, strengthen the protection of intellectual property throughout the entire chain, and safeguard high-quality industry with honest operation