Today, under the guidance of the Changning District Intellectual Property Administration of Shanghai and the Changning District Justice Bureau of Shanghai, and hosted by the Changning District Intellectual Property Association of Shanghai, with co-organization by the Intellectual Property Committee of the Shanghai Bar Association and the Changning District Shangning Legal Mediation Service Center of Shanghai, the “New Quality Dynamics, Smart Future” 4·26 Intellectual Property Forum was successfully held. During the event, the “2025 Shanghai New Quality Productive Forces Outstanding Intellectual Property Cases” were announced. The second-instance case concerning an alleged infringement of design patent rights, in which Lusheng Law Firm represented an internationally renowned energy-saving sanitary ware brand in responding to a lawsuit filed against it, was honorably selected.
Brief Case Overview
In October 2023, a natural person, Mr. Kuang, filed a lawsuit with the Shanghai Intellectual Property Court for infringement of design patent rights, alleging that an internationally renowned energy-saving sanitary ware brand company (hereinafter referred to as the “Renowned Sanitary Ware Brand”) had infringed his design patent rights in a certain pull-out faucet product. He requested that the court order the sanitary ware brand company to immediately cease the infringing acts and to compensate him for losses and reasonable expenses in a total amount of RMB 200,000. Mr. Kuang notarized the online stores and webpages of the accused infringing products sold on JD.com, Taobao and Pinduoduo, and conducted notarized purchase and evidence collection for products sold by certain stores.
As an internationally renowned energy-saving sanitary ware brand, it enjoys a very high reputation in the global sanitary ware industry and has neither the need nor the possibility to copy others’ design patents. In the first instance, the sanitary ware brand company voluntarily submitted an appraisal opinion on the accused infringing products, civil judgments against certain infringing Taobao stores, and records of online infringement complaints, among other evidence. This evidence preliminarily demonstrated that the accused infringing products were not produced, sold, or offered for sale by the sanitary ware brand company itself. However, in June 2024, the court of first instance, having found that products sold by certain stores were counterfeit products bearing the brand of the sanitary ware brand company, did not determine whether products sold by other stores were counterfeit, and directly held the sanitary ware brand company liable to cease the infringement and to pay RMB 50,000 in damages.
Following the first-instance judgment, the Renowned Sanitary Ware Brand filed an appeal with the Shanghai High People’s Court and engaged Lusheng Law Firm to act as its counsel in this case. The core issue in dispute was whether the internationally renowned energy-saving sanitary ware brand company had committed acts infringing the natural person’s design patent rights at issue. In the second instance, the attorneys from Lusheng supplemented the record with extensive evidence, including numerous infringement complaint records filed by the sanitary ware brand company against stores on platforms such as Taobao and Pinduoduo, cease-and-desist letters sent by lawyers, civil judgments in lawsuits initiated by the brand, as well as the appearances of all pull-out faucet products manufactured and sold by the sanitary ware brand company, and evidence showing that numerous stores on the market were counterfeiting the renowned brand in selling the accused infringing products. This successfully enabled the judges to form an inner conviction that the negative fact—that the client had not produced or sold the accused infringing products—had reached a high degree of probability. In January 2025, the Shanghai High People’s Court rendered its second-instance judgment, reversing the first-instance judgment, dismissing all of Mr. Kuang’s claims, and ordering him to bear all case acceptance fees for both the first and second instances.
Typical Significance
1. After purchasing products bearing the trademark of the internationally renowned energy-saving sanitary ware brand from an e-commerce platform, the natural person, Mr. Kuang, sued the brand owner for infringement of his design patent rights. In fact, the products purchased by Mr. Kuang were counterfeit products bearing the brand owner’s registered trademark. The brand owner received a court summons without cause and was forced to participate as a defendant in a design patent infringement dispute, and was held liable for infringement at first instance, which was an unwarranted misfortune and highly unreasonable from the brand owner’s perspective. However, in the current context of rampant counterfeit products bearing various brand owners’ registered trademarks, the brand owner’s experience is to some extent representative.
2. Despite the unfavorable first-instance judgment rendered by the Shanghai Intellectual Property Court against the sanitary ware brand company, the second instance achieved a complete reversal, with the Shanghai High People’s Court fully supporting the brand owner’s grounds of appeal. The case aims to prevent right holders from bearing legal liability for infringing others’ lawful rights and interests through counterfeit products, due to their failure to promptly discover trademark counterfeiting or due to objective reasons such as delayed or unsuccessful enforcement efforts. This is of significant importance for protecting the lawful rights and interests of intellectual property right holders, maintaining normal market order, enhancing the innovative vitality of market entities, and strengthening confidence in China’s intellectual property regime.
3. In the second-instance proceedings, the sanitary ware brand company, through argumentation and evidence production, successfully convinced the judges that it had not produced or sold products infringing the plaintiff’s design patent rights, thereby effectively avoiding the imposition of highly unreasonable infringement liability. The final judgment forcefully safeguarded the lawful rights and interests of the sanitary ware brand company as a good-faith, law-abiding operator in the Chinese market, effectively avoided unwarranted economic losses, and preserved the reputation of the sanitary ware brand as a century-old renowned brand. This case provides useful guidance for brand owners on how to prove the establishment of the negative fact that they do not produce or sell infringing products.
