The Beijing High People\u2019s Court has upheld a first\u2011instance judgment finding Shanghai RUSH RICH Trading Co., Ltd. and related companies liable for trademark infringement and unfair competition against the well\u2011known wine brand Penfolds\/\u5954\u5bcc. The decision confirms punitive damages of more than RMB 70 million, marking a significant victory for Treasury Wine Estates (TWE).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Court ruled that the defendants\u2019 long\u2011term use of the trademarks \u201c\u5954\u5bcc\u9152\u56ed\u201d and \u201cRUSH RICH\u201d on wine products constituted malicious, large\u2011scale infringement. It applied double punitive damages and ordered three corporate defendants to pay over RMB 70 million in compensation. Two individuals, Mr. Zeng and Mrs. Xiong, were also held supplementarily liable for RMB 49.97 million after unlawfully reducing the registered capital of an implicated company during litigation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This civil judgment follows the Supreme People\u2019s Court\u2019s 2022 decision invalidating the \u201c\u5954\u5bcc\u9152\u56ed\u201d trademark for having been obtained through \u201cillicit means\u201d under Article 44.1 of the PRC Trademark Law. The new judgment represents a further crackdown on the defendants\u2019 long\u2011running attempts to imitate Penfolds through trademark filings and marketplace activity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In this latest case, the courts found that the defendants jointly operated extensive infringement schemes involving wide distribution, high sales volumes, and clear malicious intent. Evidence submitted by the defendants themselves in earlier trademark prosecution proceedings formed a key basis for calculating damages. For the defendants\u2019 main defences relating to joint infringement, statute of limitations, calculation period of infringement damages, repetitive litigation, shareholders\u2019 liabilities in case of unlawfully reducing registered capital, they were all rejected by the courts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
East IP\u2019s team coordinated administrative and judicial actions across nearly 200 trademark cases and more than 100 civil and administrative litigations involving the defendants. In this final civil case, East IP developed a comprehensive strategy covering evidence collection, legal arguments, punitive damages, and shareholder liability \u2013 ultimately securing full support from both trial and appellate courts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Partners \u9ec4\u9759\u6587<\/a>, \u6768\u548c\u5e73<\/a>, and lawyer \u9a6c\u6d2a<\/a> led the litigation, with support from partner \u8d3e\u8339<\/a> and lawyers Jie Yin, Joying Tan, and \u95eb\u666f\u7530<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Beijing High People\u2019s Court has upheld a first\u2011instance judgment finding Shanghai RUSH RICH Trading Co., Ltd. and related companies liable for trademark infringement and unfair competition against the well\u2011known wine brand Penfolds<\/p>","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1005,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[142,134,100],"class_list":["post-4849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-cases","tag-english-news-only","tag-punitive-damages"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.east-ip.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.east-ip.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.east-ip.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.east-ip.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.east-ip.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4849"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.east-ip.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4849\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4850,"href":"https:\/\/www.east-ip.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4849\/revisions\/4850"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.east-ip.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.east-ip.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.east-ip.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.east-ip.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}