1. Case Profile & Applicable Provisions of China’s 2021 Revised Patent Law
This authoritative civil patent dispute was ruled by the Foshan Intermediate People’s Court (2024) Yue06 Min Chu No. 941, a typical utility model infringement case fully involving Chinese domestic manufacturers, 1688 wholesale platforms and offline hardware distributors, without any American companies, U.S. patents or cross-border sales targeting the United States. The patentee is Jiahua Hardware Technology Co., Ltd., a Guangdong-based manufacturer specializing in kitchen hardware fittings. It obtained a domestic utility model patent titled “a detachable anti-slip cabinet hanging bracket” (Patent No. ZL20232011XXXX) via CNIPA, covering the structural combination of bracket clamping grooves, anti-drop limit buckles and adjustable sliding rails for household cabinets. The infringing manufacturing defendant is Hongsheng Processing Factory, a small-scale hardware stamping plant in Zhejiang Province; the sales defendant is a wholesale store operated by individual merchant Mr. Zhou on the domestic 1688 industrial goods platform.
1. Article 11 Patent Law: After a utility model patent is granted, no entity or individual may, without the patentee’s permission, manufacture, sell or offer for sale products incorporating the patented technical solution for production or business purposes. Offering for sale on domestic industrial wholesale e-commerce platforms constitutes an independent infringing act separate from manufacturing and physical sales.
2. Article 65 Patent Law: Where the actual losses suffered by the patentee or the illegal gains obtained by the infringer are difficult to calculate, the people’s court may impose statutory compensation ranging from RMB 30,000 to RMB 5 million, comprehensively weighing the type of patent, scale of infringement, subjective malice of the infringer, duration of infringement and reasonable expenses incurred by the right holder to stop infringement.
3. Article 77 Patent Law (Legitimate Source Defense): If a party selling or offering for sale an infringing product can prove that the product was obtained through a legitimate sales channel and the seller did not know the product infringed another’s patent right, the seller shall not bear liability for compensation, but must immediately stop selling and offering for sale the infringing goods.
4. Judicial Interpretation on Patent Disputes Article 17 (All-Element Coverage Rule): To determine whether an accused infringing technical solution falls within the scope of patent protection, all technical features recorded in the independent claim shall be compared. If the accused product contains all identical or equivalent technical features of the claim, full infringement shall be affirmed.
From April 2024 to August 2024, Jiahua Hardware’s patent monitoring team purchased sample products from Mr. Zhou’s 1688 store and conducted notarized webpage preservation of product pictures, specifications and bulk order transaction records. Forensic technical comparison commissioned by the court confirmed complete feature overlap with the utility model patent.
1. Hongsheng Processing Factory independently designed stamping molds, mass-produced cabinet hanging brackets fully matching all structural features of the patented technical solution, and supplied over 12,000 finished products to multiple domestic wholesale merchants including Mr. Zhou’s store within 4 months; total wholesale revenue generated by infringing products reached approximately RMB 410,000.
2. The factory never contacted Jiahua Hardware to obtain a written patent licensing contract or pay royalty fees; internal production order archives and mold design drafts seized by the court proved the technical parameters of the infringing product were copied directly from the patent publication text downloaded from the CNIPA official public database.
3. Merchant Zhou submitted procurement invoices and delivery vouchers issued by Hongsheng Factory to claim legitimate source exemption from compensation liability. However, the court found the product catalog provided by the factory clearly marked the patented structural features, and Zhou, as a professional hardware wholesaler with 8 years of industry experience, failed to fulfill reasonable intellectual property review obligations before bulk purchasing.
4. Both defendants conducted continuous offering for sale on the domestic 1688 platform; even after receiving formal cease-and-desist letters with patent certificates and notarized comparison reports, they kept product links online for another 38 days and continued accepting new bulk orders, which the court identified as aggravated subjective malice.
Two core defenses raised by the defendants were fully rejected: first, minor dimensional tolerance adjustments of metal accessories constituted a new independent technical solution without infringement; second, utility model patents only protected appearance rather than internal assembly structures, so mass manufacturing did not violate patent rights.
The court appointed a CNIPA-recognized technical appraisal institution to complete feature alignment, and issued a definitive holding: the accused infringing bracket retained every limiting technical feature of the patent independent claim, including clamping groove structure, anti-drop buckle limiting mechanism and adjustable slide rail matching relation. Minor adjustments to metal plate thickness within production tolerances belonged to trivial dimensional changes that could not break the identical feature correspondence, thus satisfying the all-element coverage rule and constituting direct manufacturing infringement under Article 11 of the Patent Law. The judgment clarified that utility model patents comprehensively protect product assembly structures rather than merely external shapes.
Article 77 of the Patent Law only exempts compensation liability for innocent sellers without subjective fault. The court ruled that professional hardware wholesale operators engaged in long-term bulk trading bear a higher duty of care for industrial intellectual property rights. Since Zhou failed to verify the supplier’s patent licensing qualifications before placing large orders and continued sales after receiving infringement notifications, his legitimate source defense was not sustained, and joint compensation liability with the manufacturing factory was imposed.
The court took multiple aggravating factors into account when determining compensation: the manufacturer’s active copying of published patent technical documents for mass production, continuous offering for sale after receiving cease-and-desist notices, large infringing output and sales volume, and the patent’s high practical value in the domestic home hardware industry. Reasonable rights-protection expenses including notarization fees, technical appraisal fees and attorney fees were separately supported in full.
After comprehensive factual and legal deliberation, the court issued the following binding judgment against Hongsheng Processing Factory and merchant Zhou:
1. Order Hongsheng Processing Factory to immediately cease all manufacturing, sales and supply acts of infringing cabinet hanging brackets; destroy all existing stamping molds, semi-finished products and finished infringing goods stored in its factory premises within 15 working days.
2. Order merchant Zhou to permanently delete all infringing product listings, pictures and promotional materials from its 1688 wholesale store, and fully stop all online offering for sale and offline wholesale distribution of infringing hardware products.
3. Joint statutory compensation for economic losses plus full reimbursement of reasonable rights-protection expenses totaling RMB 336,000, of which Hongsheng Processing Factory bears 70% (RMB 235,200) and merchant Zhou bears 30% (RMB 100,800).
4. All litigation fees, technical appraisal fees and evidence notarization fees incurred in this case shall be fully borne by the two infringing defendants proportionally according to their respective liability shares.
This judgment sets clear compliance benchmarks for all Chinese domestic hardware manufacturing plants and industrial goods wholesale merchants operating only within mainland China without U.S.-oriented export business:
1. Domestic utility model patents protect product assembly structures automatically upon CNIPA authorization; manufacturers cannot avoid infringement liability by only adjusting minor product dimensional tolerances without changing core patented structural combinations.
2. Wholesale merchants engaged in long-term bulk industrial goods trading bear enhanced IP review obligations; purchasing products without verifying suppliers’ patent licensing documents will invalidate legitimate source defenses and trigger joint compensation liability.
3. Receipt of formal patent cease-and-desist notices creates an immediate legal obligation to remove all infringing links and suspend sales; continued online offering for sale will be deemed malicious infringement and lead to higher statutory compensation amounts.
4. Mass copying technical solutions from publicly available CNIPA patent databases for commercial mass production constitutes intentional infringement, which courts will weigh as an aggravating factor when calculating compensation.
1. WIPO WIPOLEX Full Official English 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 (English interface supported): https://cpquery.cponline.cnipa.gov.cn
3. Official Website of Foshan Intermediate People’s Court (Domestic IP Judgment Public Inquiry Portal): https://www.fsfy.gov.cn/
4. National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) Official English Website Patent Fee & Examination Guidelines: https://www.cnipa.gov.cn/english/
