This civil case is a real judgment from a local intellectual‑property court in eastern China. All real enterprise names are replaced by fictitious aliases to protect commercial confidentiality. The plaintiff firm, Nova Hardware Co., Ltd, specialized in designing and producing household hardware accessories. The company obtained a valid utility‑model patent for a novel quick‑release connecting structure for cabinet drawer slides. This utility‑model patent solved practical installation pain points, reduced assembly time for cabinet workers, and achieved stable market sales in domestic home‑improvement channels. Nova Hardware invested heavily in mould development, product testing and market promotion for this patented product, and occupied a stable market share in the mid‑range hardware segment.
The defendant includes two related entities: Oriental Manufacturing Limited, a factory responsible for mass production, and its affiliated sales company Pine Trading Co., Ltd, which operated multiple online stores on mainstream domestic e‑commerce platforms. <b>Without obtaining any licensing authorization from the patentee, Oriental Manufacturing reverse‑engineered the drawer‑slide connecting structure, produced large‑volume duplicate products using modified moulds, and supplied goods to Pine Trading for online distribution</b>. Pine Trading listed these copycat goods on e‑commerce stores, used similar product descriptions and main‑page pictures, and sold infringing products at significantly lower prices to seize market share. A large number of online orders were generated within a short period, directly squeezing the sales volume and profit margin of Nova Hardware’s patented goods.
After discovering suspected infringing links on e‑commerce platforms, Nova Hardware completed notarized purchase of physical samples, downloaded webpage data, and obtained an official patent evaluation report issued by the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA). The evaluation report confirmed that the utility‑model patent possessed novelty and creative height. The patentee sent formal cease‑and‑desist letters to both defendant companies. Pine Trading removed several product links temporarily, yet Oriental Manufacturing continued mass production and supplied infringing goods through alternate online resellers. Given the ineffective warning effect, Nova Hardware filed civil patent‑infringement litigation before the intellectual‑property court. The plaintiff requested the court to order the defendants to stop manufacturing, selling and offering for sale infringing products, destroy dedicated production moulds, and jointly compensate economic losses plus reasonable litigation costs amounting to RMB 1.42 million.
During trial, the defendants raised two core defensive arguments. <b>First, Oriental Manufacturing contended that several technical features of its products adopted conventional public‑domain technical solutions, so the accused product did not fully cover all technical features of the utility‑model patent claims</b>. Second, Pine Trading claimed it belonged to a pure sales channel operator; it purchased finished goods from external suppliers and had no knowledge of potential patent defects, so it should qualify for the legal “good‑faith seller exemption” rule under Chinese Patent Law. The defendants submitted component purchase invoices and supplier communication records to support their legitimate‑source defence.
The court carried out physical technical comparison strictly following the “all‑technical‑feature rule” for utility‑model patent judgement. <b>The all‑technical‑feature rule requires that if an accused product contains every technical feature recorded in an independent claim, it shall be affirmed to fall within the patent protection scope, even with additional added technical features</b>. After decomposing claim‑1 technical points, the court held that the accused infringing product reproduced every essential technical feature of the patent, and added only non‑essential auxiliary structures, which did not avoid infringement determination. Further investigation proved that Pine Trading maintained deep business cooperation with Oriental Manufacturing, participated in product specification confirmation and profit sharing, and was not an independent passive reseller. Therefore, the good‑faith seller legitimate‑source defence could not apply in this circumstance.
<b>Joint infringement shall be established when one entity manufactures infringing goods and a related affiliated company participates in sales planning and profit sharing; both entities shall bear joint and several compensation liability</b>. Considering multiple factors including patent market value, the large‑scale production capacity of the factory, huge online sales volume of infringing products, and the defendants’ continuous production after receiving warning notice, the court rendered the final civil judgment. Oriental Manufacturing and Pine Trading must immediately cease manufacturing, selling and offering for sale the drawer‑slide products that infringed the utility‑model patent, destroy special‑purpose moulds dedicated to producing the infringing structure, and jointly pay compensatory damages of RMB 860,000, including reasonable rights‑protection expenses.
This case delivers practical lessons for domestic manufacturing and e‑commerce operators in China. <b>Merely adding trivial extra technical structures cannot escape utility‑model patent infringement liability; e‑commerce sellers cannot blindly rely on the legitimate‑source defence when cooperating closely with manufacturing factories</b>. Enterprises shall conduct patent risk clearance before launching new hardware products. Online sales companies must verify intellectual‑property status of upstream suppliers, and keep complete supplier qualification review documents. When receiving patent cease‑and‑desist notices, companies should actively conduct patent validity analysis instead of simply deleting links while continuing production through alternative channels.
1. https://www.cnipa.gov.cn/en/ (Official website of China National Intellectual Property Administration)
2. https://ipc.court.gov.cn/zh‑cn/news/view‑5301.html (Typical patent cases published by Supreme People’s Court Intellectual Property Tribunal)
3. https://www.court.gov.cn/zixun/xiangqing/452031.html (People’s Court typical cases for manufacturing and e‑commerce patent infringement)
4. https://www.wipo.int/wipolex/en/details/chn138 (WIPO database: full text of China Patent Law)
