Recently, Zhuhai Gree Electric Appliances Co., Ltd. added a court announcement, related to its lawsuit against AUX Air Conditioning Co., Ltd. and seven other defendants for trade secret infringement. The announcement shows that the plaintiff Gree demands that the seven defendants immediately stop infringing the plaintiff’s trade secrets, permanently delete the electronic data containing the plaintiff’s trade secrets, as well as air conditioner products, molds, technical drawings, etc., transfer the patent rights of ZL201410800759.8, ZL201420816905.1, ZL201410800823.2, ZL201420816545.5, ZL201420793148.0, ZL201410774412.0, ZL201420793222.9, ZL201420814998.4 to the plaintiff’s name, and compensate the plaintiff 99 million yuan.

It is reported that among the seven defendants, in addition to AUX Air Conditioning, Ningbo Aosheng Trading Co., Ltd. is a holding subsidiary of AUX, and Gu Tangtang, Wu Qingzhuang, Huang Jiabai and five other natural persons have all invented air conditioning related patents and registered them under AUX’s name.

In fact, the dispute between Gree and AUX has a long history. In December 2018, AUX purchased an invention patent with the patent number 00811303.3 and the name “Compressor” (hereinafter referred to as the patent involved) from Toshiba Carrier Corporation, and then based on this patent as the right basis, sued Gree for manufacturing and selling four air conditioners that infringed its patent rights to the intermediate courts in Hangzhou and Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, respectively, requesting to confirm that the defendant’s actions constituted patent infringement and compensate it for a total of 267 million yuan in economic losses, and also listed related salesmen as co-defendants.

In December 2021 and August 2022, the Ningbo Intermediate People’s Court (two cases) and the Hangzhou Intermediate People’s Court (two cases) successively found that Gree constituted infringement, and the compensation amounts of the four cases were 96 million yuan, 70.6 million yuan, 33 million yuan and 25 million yuan respectively, with a total amount of more than 220 million yuan.

Gree was dissatisfied with the verdicts of the four cases, AUX was dissatisfied with the verdict of one of them, and appealed to the Supreme People’s Court.

During this period, Gree filed an invalidation request for the patent involved with the State Intellectual Property Office, which made an invalidation declaration request review decision (hereinafter referred to as the decision being sued), declaring part of the claims invalid. Gree was dissatisfied and filed an administrative lawsuit with the Beijing Intellectual Property Court. On December 28, 2022, the Beijing Intellectual Property Court ruled to revoke the part of the decision being sued that continued to maintain the validity of the claims and requested a new review decision. Gree, AUX and the State Intellectual Property Office were all dissatisfied with this first-instance judgment and appealed to the Supreme People’s Court.

On April 23rd, the Intellectual Property Tribunal of the Supreme People’s Court publicly heard five appeals involving AUX and Gree’s invention patent invalidation and infringement disputes.

The Supreme People’s Court held that the core focus of dispute in patent invalidation administrative cases was: whether the interpretation of claims by the decision being sued and the first-instance judgment was correct, whether the disclosure of patent specification was sufficient, whether patent claims were supported by specification , whether patent involved had novelty and inventiveness. The focus of dispute in second instance of four civil infringement cases was: whether first instance omitted necessary co-defendants , whether AUX had plaintiff qualification , whether infringing products fell within scope of protection of patent involved , whether existing technology defense was established , whether compensation amount was reasonable , etc. At present , case is under further trial .