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According to relevant media reports, the Chengdu District Court rejected Geely's lawsuit against Weima employees for infringing trade secrets. This is by far the largest amount of litigation in the domestic intellectual property industry, with the largest amount of litigation up to 2.1 billion yuan.

At the end of August this year, Geely filed a complaint with the higher people's Court about Weimar and its four subsidiaries because Weimar copied the Geely model, demanded financial compensation, and recovered patents that had been applied for by Weimar. The trial was held in the Shanghai higher people's Court on September 17 this year.

Geely's "lawsuit" against Weima is a dispute between a traditional mainframe factory and a new car company, which is not only a large amount of litigation, but also the first intellectual property infringement case initiated by a Chinese independent car company, so it has been widely concerned by the industry. More than a month later, it was revealed that the local court rejected the claim.

In the outside world, the cause of the incident is caused by Shen Hui, the founder of Weimar. Public data show that during the listing period of his career, Shen Hui suddenly decided to resign from Geely and founded a new power car company, Weima Motors, in 2015. Before Shen Hui left and after the establishment of the company, many "half-armed Jiangshan", including senior executives, were taken away from Geely. Shen Hui also told the media in 2016 that Weimar had more than 200 core employees at that time, all of whom were his former colleagues.

In recent years, with the support of capital, the new force of car building is growing day by day in Weima Automobile. As of July 2019, Weima's team size has exceeded 3000 people, bringing together a large number of talents from the whole industry chain around the world, distributed in R & D centers around the world. Under the support of talents, Weima independent technology has made great progress and breakthrough. According to the data, 81 patents were applied for and granted by Weima in the third quarter of 2019. As of September this year, Weimar has applied for and obtained a total of 1157 patents.

Obviously, this is an invisible blow to Li Shufu, who has spent more than 20 years building a car empire that sells millions of vehicles a year and has attracted tens of thousands of talents. However, Weima stole the limelight of the "old forces" and poached many core talents, and Li Shufu's counterattack was also a kind of necessity. For Weima, which has been established for only four years and does not achieve self-hematopoiesis, once Geely wins the case and faces up to 2.1 billion compensation funds, it must also be related to the life and death of Weima.

In fact, the proof of intellectual property cases is more complex, and the scope and determination of trade secret points is one of the difficulties in this case. Some experts said that with the flow of core personnel, how to define the disclosure of trade secrets and prevent touching the "red line" of relevant regulations and regulations is a "difficult problem" that both car companies and relevant legal institutions must face. It means that how Geely proves that Weimar caused a huge loss matched with 2.1 billion yuan has become the key to this case.

If it is to continue, it is bound to lengthen the front to fight a lawsuit. For example, if Porsche gives up the lawsuit against Zhongtai, Land Rover sued Lufeng for three years before winning the lawsuit. In this way, it takes time and money, and it will also affect the reputation of the brand in the process. In the long run, it may not be a good thing to file a lawsuit in such a big battle.

In addition, Weima has also been affected to a certain extent in the process of experiencing this case. in July this year, Weima just announced plans to start financing for D-round, with a target of up to US $1 billion, but people in the industry believe that the case may slow down Weima's financing.

On the other hand, Weimar's sales are not as good as expected. Data released by Weimar show that from January to September this year, the number of companies insured reached 12643, of which 1331 in September, down 38.8 per cent from the previous month. The cumulative license volume in the first nine months was 12656 vehicles, which is still far behind Weima's target of delivering 100000 vehicles for the whole year.

As Geely applied for a private hearing, the details of the trial could not be obtained, and we still do not know whether Weimar is infringing. For Geely, although the lawsuit is inconclusive, intellectual property cases of infringement of trade secrets disputes are more often used as a business strategy means for enterprises to compete with each other and combat competitors. Obviously, Geely has achieved certain results.

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