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After four years, Geely Motor and Weimar Automobile infringement of trade secrets case finally ushered in new progress. According to reports, the Shanghai higher people's Court has made a judgment of first instance on the dispute over 2.1 billion yuan of intellectual property rights between Geely and Weimar. The judgment of the first instance of the case was issued in September. According to the verdict of the Shanghai higher people's Court, Weima needs to compensate Geely 7 million yuan, including 7 million yuan for Geely Automobile, including 5 million yuan for economic losses and 2 million yuan for various expenses to stop infringement. In addition, Weima Automobile will stop using five auto parts drawings used on the EX5 model, which include front stabilizer rod assembly, rear axle assembly mounting bracket, front suspension left lower swing arm, front stabilizer lever left sleeve, and rear axle assembly, all of which are chassis parts. After hearing, the court found that the relevant information of the five drawings all belonged to Geely.

Geely did not respond to the above news; Weimar responded to Caijing that the verdict of the case had not yet taken effect and had filed an appeal; the suspension of drawings had no material or little impact on the company.

The thing is, according to the Shanghai higher people's Court, Zhejiang Geely holding Group Co., Ltd. sued Weimar for "infringing trade secrets" in 2018, demanding compensation of 2.1 billion yuan and related litigation costs. On September 17, 2019, when the case first opened, Weimar commissioned the Global Law firm to answer the case. "Weimar did not commit any infringement, and we are very confident of winning this lawsuit," Weimar told the media at the time. "

According to the official website of app, the automobile industry has a total of 70 patent disputes, most of which are related to Geely. Tianyan investigation shows that except for one case that was withdrawn by Geely on its own initiative, the rest of the cases are still in the civil first trial stage.

Weimar Motor was founded in 2015 by Shen Hui, former vice president of Geely holding Group, and is headquartered in Shanghai. Geely Automobile Group is a brand of Geely Automobile Group, which belongs to Zhejiang Geely holding Group. Headquartered in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China. In fact, Weimar has many connections with Geely. Weima founder Shen Hui was vice president of Geely Holdings from 2009 to 2014. In addition, a number of senior internal officials of Weimar have worked at Geely. Including Weima co-founder Hou Haijing is also from Geely.

According to the prospectus, Weimar reserved a budget of 61.2 million yuan in its annual consolidated financial statements at the end of 2021, which is mainly used to deal with trade secrets and intellectual property disputes. Another use is to complete the replacement or elimination of technical solutions or patents involved in disputes between the end of 2022 and the middle of 2023.

As one of the former new power head car companies, Weimar has not been very peaceful since 2022, especially in the second half of the year, there was a lot of negative news about Weimar in the market, including wage cuts, layoffs, shop closures, or acquisitions.

According to the prospectus, Weima Automobile's R & D expenditure from 2019 to 2021 was 893 million yuan, 992 million yuan and 981 million yuan respectively, accounting for 50.7%, 37.1% and 20.7% of total revenue in the same period, respectively. From the data, the proportion of investment in R & D of Weima is not high, and shows a trend of shrinking year by year, with a cumulative expenditure of less than 3 billion yuan during the three-year period from 2019 to 2021. Compared with the current mainstream "Wei Xiaoli", Weima Motor has more abundant resources, including two self-built factories with a production capacity of 250000 vehicles, a financing scale of more than 30 billion yuan, and more than 600 distribution stores, but in terms of investment in research and development, compared with "Wei Xiaoli", Weima Automobile does not have a high proportion of R & D investment.

According to the prospectus, Weima Motor's revenue from 2019 to 2021 was 1.7621 billion yuan, 2.6717 billion yuan and 4.7425 billion yuan, and the corresponding net losses were 4.145 billion yuan, 5.084 billion yuan and 8.206 billion yuan respectively, with a cumulative loss of 17,435 billion yuan in three years. Weima Motor has lost more than 10 billion yuan since 2017. In 2017, Weimar put forward the "128" strategy, that is, two vehicle platforms were developed around an electronic and electrical architecture, and eight electric vehicles were launched. But so far, Weima's five models are all based on the first-generation architecture and platform. In addition, on June 1 this year, Weima officially submitted an application for listing of Hong Kong shares, but the road to listing was not smooth. At present, its prospectus has been "invalid" at the beginning of this month, and Weima has reached a precarious moment.

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