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Geely Motor sued Weima Motor for infringing trade secrets, which aroused social concern because of claims as high as 2.1 billion yuan, which is currently the largest commercial dispute in intellectual property litigation in China.

According to a civil ruling issued by the Sichuan Provincial higher people's Court recently, Chengdu Plateau Automotive Industry Co., Ltd., owned by Geely Motor, as the plaintiff, has voluntarily withdrawn the lawsuit against Weima Automobile and paid 695900 yuan to accept the case.

According to the civil ruling, the dispute between the plaintiff Chengdu Plateau Automotive Industry Co., Ltd. and the defendant Weima Zhongde Automotive Technology Chengdu Co., Ltd., Weima Automotive Technology Group Co., Ltd. was filed on October 12, 2018. The plaintiff Chengdu Plateau Automotive Industry Co., Ltd. filed an application for voluntary withdrawal on December 25, 2019, which does not violate the law, so it is allowed to withdraw the lawsuit.

In addition, the case acceptance fee of 1391800 yuan, halved by 695900 yuan, is borne by Chengdu Plateau Automobile Industry Co., Ltd.

It is understood that Chengdu Plateau Automotive Industry Co., Ltd. was established on October 8, 2007. the legal representative is an Conghui, who is the president and CEO of Zhejiang Geely Automobile Group. Chengdu Plateau Automobile Industry Co., Ltd. is actually a first-class manufacturing subsidiary of Geely, which is mainly responsible for the production of Geely Vision SUV models.

It is worth noting that Geely sued Weimar this time, and it is reported that Weima EX5 copied its model, and the model involved is Geely Vision SUV (Global Eagle GX7). At the same time, the series of cases are in a tense trial stage, Geely suddenly volunteered to pay fees and withdraw the lawsuit, making the outside world a lot of speculation.

In fact, Geely's lawsuit against Weimar is not over, because Geely sued Weima with different subjects.

In addition to the above cases, Zhejiang Geely holding Group Co., Ltd. and Zhejiang Geely Automobile Research Institute Co., Ltd., as plaintiffs, sued Weima Automobile Technology Group and other four companies in the Shanghai higher people's Court on the grounds of infringement of trade secrets. At the same time, more than 100 natural persons, including Weima Automobile Chairman and CEO Shen Hui, were also on the defendant list. Geely filed a claim for 2.1 billion yuan in the lawsuit and demanded the recovery of patents that had been applied for by Weimar.

An executive surnamed Hou, a former vice president of Geely Group and general manager of Geely's manufacturing base in Chengdu, took all the information on Geely's SUV GX7 when he left in 2018, according to media quotes. The executive surnamed Hou and the core members of his team then joined Weimar and developed the first Weima model, the EX5.

In addition, Weimar has many core employees, all of whom have Geely's experience. Shen Hui, founder of Weimar, has served as a director and vice president of Geely Holdings Group, and a senior vice president and chairman of Volvo Automotive in China. Dr. Xu Huanxin, partner and chief operating officer of Weimar, previously led new energy technology at Volvo. Lu Bin, co-founder and senior vice president of Weimar, and Zhang ran, chief financial officer, also have working experience at Geely.

The case was formally heard at the Shanghai higher people's Court on September 17, 2019. Geely applied to the court for a private trial and was not allowed to attend the trial, while Weimar said there was no infringement of other people's intellectual property rights and supported a public trial. It is said that the sentence was not pronounced in court during the trial, and the case is still under further trial.

Geely has not responded positively to the case so far. Weima Automobile said to the outside world, "Weima always adheres to positive research and development and independent development, and pays attention to the protection of its own intellectual property rights while ensuring that it does not infringe upon other people's intellectual property rights. as of June this year, the number of patents applied for in design, technology and other fields has reached 1076. Weimar does not have any infringement, and we are very confident of winning this lawsuit. "

Geely withdrew its lawsuit in Chengdu, Sichuan, causing waves in the case in Shanghai, which once again aroused speculation about the facts of infringement. This intellectual property case involving 2.1 billion yuan, regardless of the final outcome, will be an important reference for infringement cases in the automobile manufacturing industry.

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