VIII. "CATIA" Computer Software Infringement Dispute
Plaintiff Suoda Systèmes Co., Ltd. filed a lawsuit against Defendant Shanghai Zhidou Electric Vehicle Technology Co., Ltd. for infringement of computer software copyright [Civil Judgment (2018) H73 MC No. 81 OF Shanghai IP Court, members of the collegial panel: Qian Guangwen, Wu Yingzhe, Huang Tianhua. Civil Judgment (2018) HMZ No. 429 of Shanghai High People's Court, members of the collegial panel: Tang Zhen, Tao Ye, Xu Zhuobin]
[Case Brief]
The Plaintiff is the copyright owner of the computer software CATIA V5 R20. The Plaintiff had complained to the Cultural Law Enforcement Corps in February 2017 for the Defendant's use of the infringing software. During the administrative law enforcement process, 8 sets of infringing software were discovered by Zhidou Company. During that period, the two parties reached a settlement and signed a genuine software purchase contract. The Cultural Law Enforcement Corps therefore mitigated the administrative penalty upon the Defendant according to law, but the Defendant did not pay the software purchase payment according to the contract. In November of the same year, the Plaintiff applied to the court for evidence preservation. In the process of preservation, with the consent of the Plaintiff, the court conducted evidence preservation on the installation of the software involved in the computer by determining the random sampling rate and random inspection, and then calculated the quantity of software involved installed in all of the computers in the business premises according to the proportion of the software involved installed in the computers inspected at random. Upon the inventory, there were 73 computers in the Defendant's business premises, and 15 of them were installed with the software involved. The Plaintiff instituted a lawsuit to the court, requesting that the Defendant should stop the infringement and compensate the economic losses and attorney fees, totaling more than RMB 18 million yuan.
[Adjudication]
After the trial of the court of first instance, the Defendant install the software involved in the computers in the business premises without the permission of the Plaintiff, infringing the Plaintiff's right to copy the software involved. Although the actual losses of the Plaintiff and the illegal income of the Defendant are difficult to determine, the existing evidence can prove that the Plaintiff’s losses have exceeded the upper limit of the statutory compensation amount specified in the Copyright Law, i.e. RMB 500,000 yuan. Therefore, the court determined the amount of compensation beyond the maximum amount of statutory compensation, and imposed RMB 9 million yuan on the Defendant as the compensation for the economic losses and legal fees of the Plaintiff after comprehensively analyzing the evidences of the case and considering the unit price of the software under the sales contract submitted by both parties, the time of infringement, the number of computers installing the infringing software, and the subjective malice of the Defendant by expanding the infringement scale after the infringement software had been seized by the administrative organ. After the judgment of the first instance, the Defendant refused to accept the judgment and filed an appeal. The court of second instance held that the Plaintiff and the Defendant in the case had reached a settlement agreement on the infringement found by the Cultural Law Enforcement Corps. Subsequently, the Defendant failed to implement the settlement agreement, but instead expanded the scale of the infringement. There were repeated infringements, the subjective malice of infringement was obvious, and the actual losses suffered by the Plaintiff had obviously exceeded the maximum limit of statutory compensation. Therefore, compensation should be determined beyond the maximum amount of statutory compensation. Therefore it is ruled that the appeal was rejected and the original judgment was upheld.
[Typical Significance]
This is a typical case where the court increases the compensation amount for intellectual property infringement according to law. The court determined the amount that the Defendant should compensate for the economic losses of the Plaintiff beyond the maximum amount of statutory compensation and fully support the reasonable expenses claimed by the Plaintiff by comprehensively considering the evidence of the case, and enhanced the protection of the right holder according to the law, which provided a certain reference for the trial of other similar cases and reflected the attitude and determination of the court to continuously strengthen the judicial protection of intellectual property rights. At the same time, the judgment of this case will advocate the public to use genuine software in an all-round way, respect the labor and efforts of software developers, promote the legalization of enterprise software, and form a business environment that respects and protects intellectual property, encourages and develops innovation.
photo from: paipai.com
