China: Court Imposes Highest Statutory Penalty for Refusal to Abide by Injunction – INTA Bulletin Nikita Xue
Editor’s Note: This is a summary of the article published on the INTA bulletin by Nikita Xue, partner at HongFangLaw.
For a link to the original article, here
New Balance brought five defendants to Suzhou Intermediate People’s Court on the 1st of August 2016. The charges forwarded were based on unfair competition for using New Balance’s unique trade dress without prior authorization. The unique trade dress of New Balance is the letter “N” on both sides of the sport shoes.
In addition to this, the plaintiff applied for an injunction to the court, which requested an immediate stop of production and distribution of all relevant items. Suzhou Court held two injunction hearings on August 10th 2016 and September 12th 2016. The following day of the second hearing the court ordered the defendants to cease production and distribution of the disputed ”NEW BOOM“ shoes that feature the “N” letter with accompanying reasons.The full case was heard on April 11th 2017.
However, the defendants refused to implement the injunction and continued with their activities. Consequently, the court decided to issue the maximum punishment against the defendants by ordering the highest possible statutory penalty, in accordance with the Civil Procedure Law of China, in the total amount of RMB 1.7 million (approximately USD $260,000)。
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