AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)04/23 Report--

In March this year, Jaguar Land Rover eagerly announced a major news that the infringement case of Jiangling Holdings Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Jiangling Company) was sued by the Chaoyang District people's Court in Beijing, China, and finally won after three years of litigation. The court ordered Jiangling to immediately stop the "unfair competition behavior" involved in the case, immediately stop production and sale of two specific Land Wind X7 models, issued a statement on the official website and media, and paid 1.5 million yuan in compensation to Jaguar Land Rover.

We looked through the official websites of Jiangling Company and Lufeng Motor and found no statement about the lawsuit. On the contrary, Jiangling Motor Co., Ltd. issued a clarification statement at the first time. This seemingly "unexpected" clarification statement made it clear that the Lufeng X7 is a product of Jiangling's Lufeng brand and is not directly related to Jiangling Motor, so Jiangling Motor and other words cannot be used to discuss the above case. In the lawsuit, the name of Jiangling Company was indeed used.

It was just beyond my expectation that Jiangling appealed. According to Caixin on April 23, Jiangling refused to accept the judgment and has appealed to the Beijing intellectual property Court.

The details of Jiangling's appeal are not yet known, but the Beijing intellectual property Court had earlier ruled to "revive" the design patent of Lufeng X7, which was successfully appealed by Jaguar Land Rover to the Beijing higher people's Court. The design patent of Lufeng X7 was finally declared invalid (see article of March 23: automotive industry concerns).

Further information will be released one after another in the follow-up process to see what grounds Jiangling will continue to appeal.

The lawsuit between Jaguar Land Rover and Jiangling can be divided into two parts: one is that the patent is invalid, and the other is that Jaguar Land Rover sued Jiangling for infringement. The March 23 article has been described in detail.

Here let's talk about the important information of the first instance judgment of Chaoyang Court.

The Jiangling Land Wind X7, which went on sale in September 2015, was sued in Chaoyang Court in 2016 for unfair competition and copyright infringement, which Jaguar Land Rover thought was very similar to its 2010 range Rover aurora model in China.

After nearly three years, the court made a judgment of first instance on March 13 this year.

Jaguar Land Rover believes that the "range Rover Aurora" car adopts its own unique decoration design of its own push-down roof, suspended roof, rising characteristic lines, clam shell engine cover and vehicle outline. Jiangling "Lufeng X7" and "range Rover Aurora" models have basically no difference in appearance and vision, and have the above five unique decoration designs of "range Rover Aurora" models. It is easy to make the relevant public confuse the two models, causing great losses to Jaguar Land Rover.

The Chaoyang Court held that Jiangling Company constituted an unfair competition behavior of unauthorized use of the same or similar logo for the decoration of goods that had a certain influence with others, which caused market confusion and damaged the legitimate interests and commercial reputation of Jaguar Land Rover. As a result, Jiangling immediately stopped the unfair competition practices involved in the case, including the production, display, pre-sale and sale of cars with the product name "Land Wind X7" and product models JX7200 and JX7200L, and eliminated the impact and compensated Jaguar Land Rover for economic losses and reasonable costs totaling 1.5 million yuan.

In the "copyright infringement" trial, the court did not support Jaguar Land Rover's claim that Jiangling infringed upon the copyright of its works and rejected Jaguar Land Rover's claim.

It is worth noting that Jiangling said in the trial that it had stopped producing and selling the Lufeng X7 car involved in the case before January 2018, but Jaguar Land Rover did not recognize it, and Jiangling did not submit any evidence.

In fact, the Lufeng X7, which went on sale in October 2017, is a medium-term revamped version of the Landwind X7, which continues the overall design of the original version but plays down many of the details similar to the range Rover aurora.

The judgment is a judgment of first instance, which means that any variable is possible if the case does not reach the final instance.

At the moment of winning the case, Jaguar Land Rover expressed confidence in the Chinese court's ruling in the intellectual property case, believing that it was a ruling to safeguard their rights and protect corporate design and innovation. Unexpectedly, Jiangling still refused to accept the verdict and continued to appeal.

Therefore, those words such as "domestic copycat cars tremble" should be put aside for the time being, and it will be the ultimate victory and iconic significance when Jiangling and Lufeng Motors really apologize.

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