Recently, two civil judgments of the first instance of Ningbo Intermediate People's Court of Zhejiang Province (hereinafter referred to as Ningbo Intermediate People's court) show that the trial of two cases of infringement of invention patent rights filed by Aux Air Conditioning Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Aux) against Zhuhai Gree Electric Appliance Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Gree) and Ningbo Yongge Information Technology Co., Ltd. has ended, Gree needs to compensate Aux for a total of about 167 million yuan (about 26.19 million dollars).
The two judgments are both centered on a patent involved with the name of "compressor", and the plaintiffs are both Aux. The patent number of this patent is ZL00811303.3 and the filing date is August 11, 2000. The original patentee is Toshiba Carrier Corporation. In 2018, Toshiba Carrier Corporation transferred the right of the patent to Aux, and transferred the right to pursue infringement and obtain damages for the third-party infringement occurred before the transfer.
Gree has twice requested to the CNIPA for invalidation of the patent involved. In September 2021, the CNIPA declared that only part of the patent right was invalid.
Ningbo Intermediate People's Court held public hearings on the above cases on July 19, 2021 and October 15, 2021.
Finally, Ningbo Intermediate People's Court held that the alleged infringing technical solution fell within the protection scope of claims 1 and 10 of the patent involved; according to the judicial appraisal, patent specification and relevant regulations, Gree’s defense of publicly known technology is not tenable. According to the calculation formula of "infringement profit = sales of infringing products * reasonable profit rate of infringing products * reasonable contribution rate of patent to profit", expert opinions and relevant laws and regulations, the plaintiff's claims for economic compensation of 96 million yuan and 70.6 million yuan for the two models of air conditioning products related to the patent involved are supported. The two cases are currently only at the end of the first instance, and Gree has filed an appeal.
Gree and Aux have had several lawsuits before. Last year, Gree and Aux ended a more than three-year intellectual property lawsuit. The Higher People's Court of Guangdong Province ruled in the final instance that malicious infringement of Ningbo Aosheng Trading Co., Ltd. (formerly Ningbo Aux Air Conditioning Co., Ltd.) was established and it compensated Zhuhai Gree Electric Appliance Co., Ltd. 40 million yuan (about 6.27 million dollars). This is also the effective judgment with the highest amount of compensation in the field of home appliances so far.
Source:https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_15748850