On July 8, the Quality Brands Protection Committee of China Association of Enterprises with Foreign Investment (QBPC) held an online meeting on ARRI case sharing. Based on its unfair competition lawsuit with Guangzhou Mingying, ARRI and its lawyer team shared their strategies and case study on seeking protection under Anti-Unfair Competition Law. Penny Sun, Membership Services Committee Chair, delivered opening remarks. More than 50 people from QBPC members attended the meeting.
This case is a landmark case in which color combinations and product models are protected as packaging decorations under the Anti-Unfair Competition Law. The successful evidence collection and market research by ARRI and its lawyers played a key role in proving the distinctiveness of the color combination and product models of ARRI products.
Tara Mi from ARRI, shared target selection strategy and market research guideline in this case. If right holders decided to seek protection under Article 6 of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law, the top priority was to target the proper defendant. The rational choice was to pick the one with better chance of winning the case and not the one who had the worst case of misconduct. With that in mind, when evaluating potential targets, in addition to the basic points such as unfair competition, subjective malice, jurisdiction of the case and difficulty in obtaining evidence, it was also necessary to comprehensively investigate the target company’s date of establishment, business mode and scale, intellectual property ownership and the background of its actual controller and affiliated companies, so as to make sufficient preparation for the case, and avoid potential troubles in the lawsuit. With regard to the design and implementation of the market survey, Tara said that the survey should be designed to prove that there was a strong correlation between the packaging decoration of ARRI products and the ARRI brand. Tara also shared the tips of using pilot survey to ensure the effectiveness of problem setting and enhance the controllability and predictability of the final investigation results. Tara hoped that the sharing of their experience would help right owners who suffered similar situation to set out on their own right protection journey.
In Session II, Lawyer Steve Zhao and Lv Pei, further introduced the evidence organization strategy of the case and the study on extended cases. In organizing the evidence, Lv Pei said that the key was to tell a touching story within a limited time. For this case, in addition to the basic evidence, ARRI and its lawyer team also presented to the court a series of ARRI 100th Anniversary interviews with celebrities as the “popularity evidence”, which strengthened the judge's understanding of the brand and its products. Then Lv Pei analyzed the application of Article 6 of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law through several extended cases and introduced the objects protected under this article, such as color combinations, product models, store decoration or overall business image, APP icon and commodity decoration in video games. Attendees of the meeting participated actively in the discussion and raised questions around the topic. The sharing meeting was informative and intriguing.
The member companies participating in this event were ABRO, Nike, Unilever, Victoria's Secret，Allergan, Alteco, Anta, Audi, Bitzer, Bosch, Brita, Burberry, Canon, Caterpillar, Clariant, Commscope, Continental, Danfoss, Daniel Wellington, DSM, Dupont, Eurotime, GSK, Hawley & Hazel, Honeywell, L'Oreal, LVMH Asia Pacific Ltd, MGA Entertainment, Moët Hennessy, New Balance, Novozymes, Philips, Samsung，Sanofi，Siemens，Siemens Healthineers，Signify，Syngenta， T.C.Pharmaceutical, Tommy Hilfiger, Vertiv and Zippo.