The People's Court of Chengdu High-tech Industrial Development Zone, Sichuan Province, opened a trial by law and pronounced a verdict on such an unfair competition dispute. The first instance of the court determined that the defendant's trademark owner, a Ningbo biotech company, maliciously complained against the principle of good faith and disturbed the fair order of the market and constituted unfair competition, so it was judged to compensate the seller, a certain technology company in Chengdu, for economic losses and reasonable expenses totaling 50,000 yuan.
The distributor of "Sunshine" brand eye masks and the right holders of the "Sunshine" series of word and graphic trademarks sold counterfeit "Sunshine" brand eye masks to a Taobao store from April to May 2020, infringing their registered trademarks due to exclusive rights, Zhejiang Taobao Network Technology Co., Ltd. filed three consecutive infringement complaints with a third party, and submitted online trademark registration certificates, appraisal reports and other supporting materials. On May 14, 2020, the third party determined that the complaint was established after review, and then deleted the link of the complained product on the grounds of "selling counterfeit goods", and imposed punitive measures such as search blocking on a Taobao store.
In August 2020, a Taobao store filed a malicious complaint with the "Sunshine" brand eye protection goggles dealer and the "Sunshine" series word trademark and graphic trademark owner to provide false identification reports and filed a complaint to the court on the grounds of causing losses to the defendant. The economic loss and reasonable expenses totaled 70,000 yuan.
During the trial, the plaintiff's "Sunshine" brand eye mask packaging box and the actual appearance of the eye mask sold by the plaintiff were consistent with the authentic products distributed by the defendant after comparison in court. The "genuine product" is a modification of the right holder, that is, the orientation of individual letters in the English logo on the original packaging box and the printing position of the trademark on the front of the eye mask is modified, and the goods sold by the plaintiff and the "genuine product" are derived based on this. The inconsistency with the appraisal conclusion of counterfeiting eventually led to a third party reviewing and determining that the plaintiff violated the platform rules for selling counterfeit products, and corresponding penalties were imposed. Data from the platform shows that from the date of penalties to August 2020, when the penalties were revoked, the plaintiff's store sales and the number of visitors plummeted.
The court held that in the case, the plaintiff and the defendant were competitors in the same industry, and the defendant changed the "genuine" pictures without direct evidence to prove that the plaintiff sold the counterfeit, and provided false authentication reports on this basis. In the complaint, the subjective maliciousness was obvious, which objectively caused the corresponding goods to be unable to be traded on the shelves, which directly deprived the plaintiff of the opportunity for legitimate transactions and hindered its normal business activities. The defendant's behavior was clearly beyond the reasonable scope, seriously violated the principle of good faith, disrupted the market order, and constituted an act of unfair competition. Considering the subjective malice reflected in the defendant's complaint, the loss and the duration of the plaintiff's Taobao store during the punishment period, the court made the above judgment by the law.
