Recently, Suzhou Intermediate People's Court concluded a dispute over trademark infringement and unfair competition according to law, and the defendant Fujian Furnishing Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Fujian Company") was ordered to compensate 15 million yuan to the plaintiff Nature Home (China) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Nature Company").

Since 2017, Fujian Company has applied for a registered trademark under the name of "大自然美学家" and opened the WeChat official account of "大自然美学家地板". Wherein the "Franchise Stores" section introduces that there are 46 franchise stores of nature aestheticians all over the country.

At early 2020, Nature Company sued the court after notarization of evidence preservation, demanding that Fujian Company immediately stops infringement and compensates for various losses of 15 million yuan.

The court found that Fujian Company has also successively applied for registration of a series of related logos such as “大自然美学佳”, “大自然文学家”, “大自然绘画家”, “大自然思想家”, “大自然书法家”, “大自然音乐家”, “—Nature Mxj—”. After investigation, as of the litigation in this case, the company has applied for registration of 50 trademarks on different types of goods, of which 36 were submitted on the same day. The court held that, according to the Trademark Law, using the same trademark or similar trademark on the same kind of goods or similar goods, or similar trademark that is easy to cause confusion without the permission of the trademark registrant is an act of infringing the exclusive right to use a registered trademark.

Fujian Company, as the brand operator of "大自然美学家" floor, continued to publicize and promote the "大自然美学家地板" on its WeChat official account "大自然美学家地板" and the official website www.naturemxj.com, and used China Flooring Network, China Building Materials Network and other Internet platforms to attract investment and join, and authorized a number of flooring factories to process flooring by OEM (i.e., OEM production) and then distributed them to distributors. It can be concluded that they have implemented behaviors covering the whole chain of production, sales and promotion of alleged infringing products.

As for the specific losses, the defendant's infringement profits in this case mainly include the income from franchise fees and the income from the production and sales of floor products. After careful accounting, even if the average operating time of each franchise store is only one year, the sales profit of Fujian Company has reached 8.05 million yuan. According to Article 63 of the Trademark Law, "If the malicious infringement of the exclusive right to use trademarks is serious, the amount of compensation can be determined according to the above method", punitive damages can be applied to those with serious malicious infringement.

In view of the fact that the plaintiff Nature Company claimed 15 million yuan of damages against the defendant Fujian Company in this case, its claim is fully supported. 

In view of the high amount of compensation in this case, compensation for losses is the main form of liability for intellectual property infringement at present. However, the high cost of safeguarding rights and the low amount of compensation restrict the judicial protection of intellectual property rights. In this case, the defendant enterprise registered a large number of trademarks of "大自然xx家" similar to "大自然" on floor goods around the trademark of "大自然", and the malice was very obvious, so this case met the applicable conditions of punitive damages.