In the two years since its establishment, the Intellectual Property Court of the Supreme People's Court has given full play to the advantages of the system and continuously strengthened the trial of technical intellectual property rights.
The Intellectual Property Court of the Supreme People's Court of China released the Top 10 Technical Cases in 2020.
"Kabo" Technical Secret Punitive Damages Case
[Case Number] (2019) Supreme People’s Court Zhi Min Zhong No. 562
[Basic case]
Guangzhou Tianci Company and Jiujiang Tianci Company claimed that Hua Mou, Liu Mou, Anhui Newman, Wu Moumou, Hu Moumou, Zhu Moumou, and Peng Mou infringed their "Kabo" manufacturing process technology secrets and filed a lawsuit to Guangzhou Intellectual Property Court, requested an order to stop the infringement, compensate for the loss, and make an apology.
The Guangzhou Intellectual Property Court determined that the alleged infringement constituted an infringement of the technical secrets involved, considered the intentional infringement and the circumstances of the infringement, and applied the punitive damages of 2.5 times. Guangzhou Tianci, Jiujiang Tianci, Anhui Newman, Hua Mou and Liu Mou all refused to accept the judgment of the first instance and appealed to the Supreme People's Court.
The Intellectual Property Court of the Supreme People’s Court held that the alleged infringement constituted an infringement of the technical secrets involved, but the first-instance judgment did not fully consider the contribution of the technical secrets involved in determining the amount of infringement compensation, and did not fully consider the infringement when determining punitive damages. People’s subjective maliciousness and evidence obstructive behavior, etc., on the basis of maintaining the first-instance judgment on stopping infringement, the applicable punitive damages were calculated by five times the top amount, and Anhui Newman was sentenced to compensate Guangzhou Tianci Company and Jiujiang Tianci Company for economic losses of 30 million yuan and a reasonable expenditure of 400,000 yuan, Hua, Liu, Hu, and Zhu shall be jointly and severally liable for the aforementioned compensations within the range of 5 million yuan, 30 million yuan, 1 million yuan, and 1 million yuan, respectively.
[Typical significance]
This case is the first punitive damages case ruled by the Supreme People's Court. The judgment of the case fully considered the subjective malice of the alleged infringement, the obstruction of proof, the duration of the alleged infringement, the scale of the infringement, etc., applied punitive damages, and finally determined the statutory punitive damages up to a multiple of five times clearly conveyed a strong signal to strengthen judicial protection of intellectual property rights.
