China Law Blog

China Hearsay has a post up entitled, "Why I Haven’t Posted on the Schneider Patent Decision," explaining why he had been avoiding saying anything about that decision. I actually got a couple emails asking me to write on that decision and I started writing a post on it, but then stopped when I realized I had nothing meaningful to say about it. So I will let China Hearsay explain:

As you may have heard, electrical goods firm Schneider was dinged with a US $45 million adverse judgment in a Wenzhou court recently - this was a patent infringement suit brought by a Chinese company from Wenzhou. I think the news of this came out during the National Day holiday. The newspapers had the normal writeups, plus as usual IP Dragon covered the basics - check that out here.

I have avoided posting on this until I discovered if there was anything exciting to talk about. My usual practice is not to announce every single IP decision involving a foreign litigant, but to discuss those cases that are interesting. In this instance, I waited until I got back to the office and checked out the facts in a little more detail.

So far, I have not been able to get a copy of the judgment, and the facts of the case as presented third-hand in the press are, as usual, bereft of the details I want. What I have read is that these two companies have been fighting over IP in several jurisdictions since the late 1990s, and the Wenzhou decision was the latest in this long struggle. Trying to unravel those sordid details in the hopes of using this case as some sort of precedent does not seem possible.

Beyond the huge amount of the judgment, which China Hearsay rightfully describes as "gigantic and unprecedented for China" there is little to say. China Hearsay notes that the decision is from a local court in Wenzhou and he has no idea if it will stick.

China Hearsay then wonders where the court came up with its $45 million figure and then concludes that until he gets some answers, "this story is going to remain in the 'aberrant decision' file and will not bother me too much. That is where I am going to put it also.