This effective civil judgment was handed down by the Nanjing Intermediate People’s Court, Case No. (2024) Su 01 Min Chu No. 871, involving design patent infringement of household portable food storage containers. This case focuses on the typical dispute of whether an e-commerce wholesale merchant’s legitimate source defense can be established, which is completely different from previous utility model patent cases.
The patentee is Bluewave Household Technology Co., Ltd., a domestic enterprise engaged in daily necessities R&D. The company obtained a design patent titled “Portable Sealed Food Storage Box” from the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) with patent number ZL20233007XXXX. The patent protects the overall contour, cover buckle structure and side handle layout of the product. The manufacturing defendant is Greenfield Plastic Products Factory, a small-scale injection molding manufacturer in Zhejiang Province; the sales defendant is an online wholesale store operated by a limited liability company anonymized as Jiahui E-Commerce Co., Ltd. on the domestic 1688 industrial goods platform.
Core applicable legal provisions of the Patent Law of the People’s Republic of China:
1. Article 11 Paragraph 2 of the Patent Law: After a design patent is granted, no entity or individual may, without the permission of the patentee, manufacture, sell or offer for sale products incorporating the patented design for production or business purposes.
2. Article 64 Paragraph 2 of the Patent Law: The protection scope of a design patent shall be based on the design of the product shown in the attached drawings or photographs, and the brief description may be used to interpret the design shown in the drawings or photographs. Infringement judgment adopts the principle of overall observation and comprehensive judgment from the perspective of general consumers.
3. Article 77 of the Patent Law (Legitimate Source Defense): Any party who sells or offers for sale an infringing product without knowing that it is an infringing product manufactured and sold without the patentee’s permission may be exempted from compensation liability if it can prove that the product was obtained through a legitimate channel. The premise is that the seller has no subjective fault and fulfills reasonable intellectual property review obligations.
4. Article 71 of the Patent Law: Where the actual losses of the patentee or the illegal gains of the infringer are difficult to calculate, the people’s court may award statutory compensation ranging from RMB 10,000 to RMB 5 million, comprehensively considering the patent type, infringement scale, subjective malice and reasonable expenses for rights protection.
From March 2024 to October 2024, Bluewave Household Technology entrusted a notary public to place test orders on Jiahui E-Commerce’s 1688 store and completed notarized preservation of web pages, product pictures and transaction records.
1. Greenfield Plastic Products Factory produced large quantities of sealed storage boxes. The product’s overall outline, cover buckle shape and handle layout were highly consistent with the patented design. Only the radian of the bottom corner was slightly adjusted, and no substantial difference affecting the overall visual effect existed. Within seven months, the factory supplied more than 15,000 infringing finished products to multiple online merchants including Jiahui E-Commerce.
2. Jiahui E-Commerce purchased goods from Greenfield Plastic Products Factory and launched wholesale sales on the 1688 platform. After receiving the cease-and-desist letter issued by Bluewave Household Technology with the patent certificate and notarized comparison report in June 2024, the store only temporarily hid product links for 12 days and then re-uploaded the same infringing product for continuous wholesale.
3. During the trial, Jiahui E-Commerce submitted purchase orders, delivery slips and transfer records issued by Greenfield Factory, claiming that it did not know the goods infringed the patent and requesting exemption from compensation liability. The court found that the purchased products were unbranded and belonged to generic OEM goods. As a professional long-term daily necessities wholesaler, Jiahui E-Commerce failed to request the supplier’s patent licensing documents, product design source authorization and formal qualification certificates before bulk procurement.
Two defenses raised by the defendants were rejected by the court: first, minor adjustment of the bottom radian constituted a new independent design and did not constitute infringement; second, the sales merchant provided complete purchase vouchers, so the legitimate source defense should be fully recognized.
The court compared the authorized patent pictures with the physical infringing products and held: The design features that determine the overall visual effect of the storage box, including the main body outline, snap-fit sealing cover structure and side integrated handle layout, are completely reproduced. The slight adjustment of the bottom edge radian belongs to local trivial changes and cannot form a substantive difference to avoid infringement identification. The accused design fell within the protection scope of the design patent.
The court clarified that legitimate source defense includes both objective channel legality and subjective non-fault. Objective complete purchase documents alone are insufficient. Professional commodity wholesalers bear a higher duty of care. If the merchant operates unbranded generic OEM products for a long time and fails to verify the supplier’s intellectual property authorization, it cannot be deemed “without knowing the infringement”. Therefore, Jiahui E-Commerce’s legitimate source defense was not supported.
After receiving the formal cease-and-desist notice, the merchant resumed sales after temporarily removing links, which proved subjective obvious fault. The court took this circumstance as an aggravating factor when determining the amount of statutory compensation.
After comprehensively weighing the patent value, sales volume, repeated infringement after receiving notice and reasonable rights-protection expenses such as notarization fees, appraisal fees and attorney fees, the Nanjing Intermediate People’s Court rendered the judgment:
1. Order Greenfield Plastic Products Factory to immediately cease manufacturing and selling infringing food storage boxes and destroy all existing molds, semi-finished products and inventory infringing goods.
2. Order Jiahui E-Commerce Co., Ltd. to permanently delete all infringing product pictures and commodity links on the 1688 platform and stop all online offering for sale and wholesale sales of infringing products.
3. Greenfield Plastic Products Factory shall compensate Bluewave Household Technology for economic losses and reasonable rights-protection expenses of RMB 196,000; Jiahui E-Commerce Co., Ltd. shall bear joint compensation liability of RMB 68,000.
4. All litigation fees and patent design comparison appraisal fees shall be borne proportionally by the two infringing defendants.
1. Minor local shape modification of products cannot avoid design patent infringement if the core design features determining the overall visual effect are copied.
2. For online wholesale merchants engaged in daily necessities, hardware and plastic OEM products, merely retaining purchase invoices cannot guarantee the establishment of legitimate source defense. Merchants should actively require suppliers to provide patent authorization certificates and design ownership proof.
3. After receiving formal patent infringement cease-and-desist letters, merchants must permanently remove infringing products instead of temporary concealment; resuming sales will be recognized as malicious infringement leading to higher compensation.
4. Unbranded blank OEM products carry high intellectual property risks; wholesalers with long-term stable procurement channels should establish standardized supplier IP qualification review mechanisms.
1. Manufacturers believe that slight partial adjustment of product appearance can avoid design patent infringement liability.
2. E-commerce sellers only keep simple delivery orders and transfer records, ignoring the obligation to verify the supplier’s intellectual property ownership and licensing documents.
3. After receiving infringement notifications, sellers only temporarily hide commodity links and resume sales after a short period of time, aggravating subjective fault.
4. Wholesalers blindly engage in large-scale procurement of unbranded generic OEM products without conducting prior design patent risk retrieval.
1. WIPO WIPOLEX Full English Consolidated Text of the 2020 Revised Patent Law of the People’s Republic of China: https://www.wipo.int/wipolex/en/legislation/details/21027
2. CNIPA China & Multinational Patent Examination Information Public Query System: https://cpquery.cponline.cnipa.gov.cn
3. China Judgment Documents Network National Patent Infringement Judgment Retrieval Portal: https://wenshu.court.gov.cn/
4. Official Website of the Supreme People’s Court Intellectual Property Court (Patent Judicial Interpretation & Guiding Cases): https://enipc.court.gov.cn/
