CPA Assists Swiss Client in Getting Full Damages Award in Patent Infringement Case
China Patent Agent (H.K.) Ltd. (CPA) recently won an invention patent infringement case on behalf of its Swiss client's subsidiary in China, which, as the plaintiff, was awarded the full sum of its claimed damages by the Beijing Intellectual Property Court. The damages covered an economic loss of RMB6 million and reasonable expenses of RMB150,000.
For the calculation of damages, the plaintiff asserted that it should be based on the defendants' gains from the infringement. The court, citing the ruling of a similar civil case in 2013, held that relevant data released by the defendants themselves on the website as provided by the plaintiff may be applicable to such calculation, given that the defendants had provided neither evidence for assessing the sales and profits generated from the allegedly infringing goods nor counter-evidence to challenge the evidence provided by the plaintiff.
In respect of the data needed for calculating the cost and expenditure in the profit margin, the court deemed that those provided by the plaintiff were largely in line with the general situation of the industry, the defendants' business conditions, and the infringing products in suit. In the absence of any bona fide, valid data from the defendants, the data provided by the plaintiff should be used to ascertain the defendants' profit margin generated from the production and sales of the infringing products.
In contrast to the principle of reimbursement generally adopted by the Chinese court in arriving at the amount of IP infringement damages, the Beijing IP Court in this case has taken reference from market value for damages determination to ensure sufficient compensation to the right-holder.
