Fidlock GmbH, headquartered in Germany, is a major supplier of fastening system products worldwide. Recently, with the efforts of FIDLOCK and the Unitalen Litigation Team consisting of partner and attorney WU Shuchen, patent attorneys WEN Huaqing and ZHENG Haiyang, Fidlock won again in the lawsuit against the defendant, a garment accessory company for infringement over a patent for invention, at the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court. Prior to this, Unitalen had successfully represented Fidlock and won the case in an associated case against the defendant at the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court and the Supreme People's Court. By now, Unitalen's representation of Fidlock in the judicial and administrative IP rights defense actions in China has maintained a complete victory.

Case Brief

Fidlock provides an original and user-friendly fastening system using a globally exclusive technology, which has completely changed the market and traditional solutions, combining the advantages of magnetic fasteners and that of mechanical locking. To protect the above-mentioned technological innovation, Fidlock has acquired a series of patents for the related technology in many countries including China. In order to protect its legitimate rights and interests and stop the imitation behavior, Fidlock has carried out a series of actions to protect its rights.

The defendant in this case is a well-known garment accessory company in Fujian, mainly engaged in the design and development, and production and sales of garment accessories, owns large-scale mold production and processing centers as well as hardware zipper production bases to produce tens of thousands of kinds of series products, widely used in clothing, shoes, hats, bags, home textiles and other light industrial products. Its products are exported to Europe, America, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and other more than sixty countries and regions. At the same time, there are nearly one hundred sales outlets in the domestic large and medium-sized cities.

In the first half of 2021, FIDLOCK entrusted the Unitalen Litigation Team, consisting of partner and attorney WU Shuchen and patent attorneys WEN Huaqing and ZHENG Haiyang, to file several patent infringement lawsuits with the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court against various infringing products manufactured by the garment accessory company.

Case Analysis

The main issue in this case is how to obtain a relatively high amount of compensation within the scope of legal compensation. Unitalen's litigation team comprehensively studied the defendant's sales pattern and cooperative partners, and submitted several sets of evidence to prove that the defendant's sales of the sued infringing products cover an extremely wide scope and large quantity, in spite of a low unit price. In the end, the People's Court took into account the fact that the patent involved is a patent for invention and the rights are stable, and the infringing behavior of the defendant included manufacture and sales, as well as the factors such as the situation of the defendant's distributors, the sale situation of the sued infringing products and the associated products by the retailers on the internet platforms, and the like, and held that the above information indicated the nature and situation of the infringing behaviors that the defendant's sale of the sued infringing products covered a wide range, and that the minimum quantity was relatively high when the sued infringing products were sold by the retailers of the defendant, in spite of a low unit price of the sued infringing products. It was appropriately judged that the defendant should compensate the plaintiff for economic losses and reasonable expenses totaling 1 million Yuan.