AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)09/18 Report--

The commercial dispute, by far the largest amount of litigation in the domestic intellectual property industry, will be heard in the second Court of the Shanghai High Court today. Geely, the plaintiff, is a representative of domestic auto brands, and the defendant Weima Motors is one of the representatives of the new car-building forces established in 2015.

Geely's "lawsuit" against Weima is a dispute between a traditional mainframe factory and a new car company, the first intellectual property infringement case initiated by a Chinese independent car company, and a lawsuit involving the highest amount of claims in intellectual property disputes in China's automobile industry. the subject matter of the case reached 2.1 billion yuan.

It is understood that Geely applied to the court for a private trial, that is, the trial process of the case is not allowed to attend, while Weimar said there was no infringement and supported the public trial. However, at present, both sides have signed confidentiality agreements, so the court said that there is no way to disclose anything to the public, and if any party reveals it, it will break the rules and will be punished by the court. As the case was tried in private, the complaint was not made public.

Geely sued four companies owned by Weimar, alleging that Weimar copied its model, filed financial compensation, and recovered patents that had been applied for by Weimar.

The cause of the incident will also start with the founder of Weimar. Shen Hui founded Weimar Group in 2015 as chairman and CEO. During his tenure, he served as vice president of Zhejiang Geely Holdings Group, senior vice president of Volvo Automotive Global and chairman of Volvo Automobile China. Even the core character in Geely's acquisition of Volvo.

But it was during the rise of Geely that Hui left and set up Weimar instead. After the establishment of Weimar, Shen Hui attracted a lot of former Geely and Volvo colleagues to form Weimar's core team.

It is understood that Hou Haijing, who joined Weima Motor in the second half of 2018 as co-founder and chief operating officer, is truly second only to Shen Hui. Hou Haijing joined Geely Automobile in 2012 as Vice President of Geely Group and General Manager of Chengdu Company, responsible for the production of GX7 models, and served as the head of Vision SUV product group, responsible for Vision SUV development.

While Weima's first model, EX5 wheelbase, differs only 4.2cm from Geely GX7, and the data on Weima EX5 wheelbase can not be found on Weima's website. Insiders reported that the wheel distance of Weima EX5 is exactly the same as that of GX7.

After discovering these problems, Geely immediately communicated with Weimar in an attempt to recover the core information related to Geely GX7.

Insiders revealed that "Weima also tried to negotiate a settlement with Geely several times, but each time it came to nothing, and finally Geely made the decision to sue Weima." According to laws relating to intellectual property rights, Geely requires the reclaim of patents originally belonging to Geely that have been applied for by Weimar.

Some experts said that 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. Intellectual property infringement, as the name implies, infringes on intellectual property rights. The basic concept of intellectual property rights is to give intellectual property owners exclusive rights to obtain super-competitive profits within a certain period of time. Compensation for the investment made by the inventor in bringing the product into the market.

Although the reasons and details of Geely's complaint against Weimar for infringing trade secrets have yet to be disclosed, it is worth mentioning that the core team members of Weimar have a long history with Geely.

When Weimar was founded, a number of core employees had working experience at Geely. Shen Hui also told the media in 2016 that Weima had more than 200 core employees at that time, most of whom were his former colleagues.

According to the general rules of the automobile industry, the research and development cycle of a brand new model takes at least five years or more. As for the investment in R & D and production, it is normal to spend as little as several hundred million to more than 1 billion. But during this period, with the intensification of competition in the automobile industry, it is not uncommon for employees to change jobs and poach among automobile companies.

However, 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.

Tesla had previously sued Cao Guangzhi, a former senior engineer who later worked for Xiaopeng Motor and its US subsidiary XMotors, after Tesla believed that Cao Guangzhi had stolen the source code of Tesla's AutoPilot software, according to court documents. Cao Guangzhi admitted to the court that he did download the source code, but his lawyer insisted that he had not done anything about it.

Although the trial process of the contest between Geely and Weimar is not known, it is presumed that the contest should eventually end in reconciliation. After all, from the analysis of the current situation, the situation of Weimar is indeed not optimistic, and it does not seem to have an advantage in all aspects.

In addition, Weima Motor only completed the C-round financing with a total amount of 3 billion yuan in March this year. At present, the cumulative financing amount of Weima has reached 23 billion yuan, and recently it plans to start financing by D-round. Therefore, once Geely wins the case, it will face up to 2.1 billion of the compensation fund Weima Motor whether it is possible to implement, presumably will also have a bearing on the life and death of Weima.

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