Law press platform China Judgements Online recently published court info of the second-instance civil judgment involving the dispute between Shenyang Zongyi Technology Co., Ltd. and Happy Elements Technology (Beijing) Limited. 

As the developer of the popular game "Anipop" (a top-ranking elimination leisure game in China), Happy Elements applied for registration of the "Anipop" trademark (the trademark in dispute) for use in goods and services such as computer game software in Class 9 and mobile games in Class 41. In 2017, the trademark was transferred to Tianjin LeWan Technology Development Co., Ltd. 

The defendant Zongyi Technology was found to have developed three games with the similar names (the games in dispute) and was suspected to have used taglines such as “This is even better than Anipop” in its product promotion. 

LeWan Technology and Happy Elements believe that ZongYi Company, which developed and operates the games in dispute, has used the logo similar to the trademark in dispute, thereby infringing on their trademark rights. ZongYi Company also used misleading and exaggerated words in its advertisements, which is not in line with the facts in the above-mentioned promotion, thereby constituting unfair competition through false advertisement. 

Beijing Intellectual Property Court ruled that ZongYi Company's use of the names of games in dispute constitutes an infringement of the exclusive rights to use the registered trademark according to Article 57.2 of the Trademark Law. ZongYi Company also used the taglines such as "the best elimination experience", "the most popular elimination game", "the perfect combination of bubble dragons and elimination games", "experience the fun of bubble dragons and the thrill of elimination", "happy and joyful elimination game", "happy bubble elimination every day", and "keep eliminating all summer" in the game, which constitutes an infringement of exclusive rights to use the registered trademark under Article 57.7 of the Trademark Law. Furthermore, the company used the taglines such as "This is even better than Anipop’s star elimination" in promoting its “Candy Elimination” game on download platforms, and the phrases such as "Eliminate stars, the most downloaded casual game on the App Store", "Ranked first in many countries' mobile game charts", and "the most perfect stars elimination ever" in its game promotion constitutes false advertising and violates Article 8 of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law. 

On such ground, the Beijing IP court rejected defendant’s appeal and maintained the original judgment with the ruling as below: 

The Beijing Intellectual Property Court ruled that:

ZongYi Company shall immediately cease the infringement of LeWan and Happy Element’s exclusive rights to use the registered trademark (trademarks No. 15530169, 15530166, 13365365 and 13365362) and stop its unfair competition behaviors;

ZongYi Company shall compensate LeWan and Happy Element for economic loss totaling million yuan and reasonable expenses totaling 200,000 yuan;

Other litigation requests of LeWan and Happy Element are rejected.