On the Conference for Report on the examination work of Beijing IP Court dated March 22, Jinchuan CHEN, the vice president, disclosed the following information.
There were more cases involving great amount of money. For example, the litigation of Apple against Qualcomm’s abuse of market dominance in necessary patent license for relevant communication standards involved damages of RMB 1 billion; the litigation of Qualcomm against Meizu’s request to confirm necessary patent license for relevant communication standards did not constitute monopoly involved damages of RMB 520 million; two litigations of Samsung against Huawei’s patent infringement involved damages of RMB 161 million; the 10 litigations of Baidu against Sougou’s patent infringement involved damages of RMB 1 billion; the 6 litigations of Huawei against Samsung (China) and other companies’ patent infringement involved damages of RMB 80 million.
Beijing IP Court increased the compensation for damages to patent holders. For example, the defendant was judged to compensate the plaintiff RMB 49 million as damages to its economic loss and RMB 1 million as attorney fee in the litigation of Beijing Watchdata System Co. against Hublot company’s patent infringement. This was the largest amount of compensation awarded by the Court and also the first judgment clearly supporting time-based billing of attorney; in the litigation of LG against Nippon Electric’s infringement of the invention patent “spindle motor”, Beijing IP Court supported the patentee’s claim for nearly RMB 4 million as damages and reasonable expenditure; in the litigation about the infringement of utility model patent “high-efficiency transmission device of planetary mixer” of Qingdao co-nele company, Beijing IP Court supported the patentee’s claim for nearly RMB 3.6 million as damages and reasonable expenditure.
Match the amount of damages to the market value of the patent right in cases applicable of statutory compensation. Beijing IP Court applied the statutory compensation ceiling of RMB 1 million in 10 cases including the case relating to the invention patent of Grundfos “centrifugal pump” and the case relating to the invention patent case of (Korea) Tumen Co., Ltd. “juice machine”. The average compensation sentenced by the Court for patent infringement cases increased from RMB 450 thousand in 2015 to 1.38 million in 2016.
(Source: Chinese Journal of intellectual property)