“Xueersi” Suing “Sierxue”--Final Judgement

Considering that Wuhan Hongshan District Sierxue Education Training Center (hereinafter referred to as Hongshan Sierxue Center) widely uses the Chinese characters of “Sierxue” and “Sierxue Education”, meaning “thinking and learning”, which are highly similar to the Chinese characters of “Xueersi” (learning and thinking), Beijing Xueersi Education Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Xueersi company) sued Hongshan Sierxue Center to court for trademark infringement and unfair competition. Recently, the Higher People’s Court of Hubei Province (hereinafter referred to as Hubei Higher Court) made a final judgment on the case, ordered the defendant to immediately stop trademark infringement, and compensated for economic loss of more than 300,000 Yuan, and rejected the plaintiff’s other claims.

Beijing Xueersi company learned after research that Hongshan Sierxue Center extensively used the Chinese characters of “Sierxue” (thinking and learning) as written labels in its education and training activities, which were identical to the Chinese characters of the trademark “Xueersi” (learning and thinking), but only in reversed order, so it sued Hongshan Sierxue Center to Intermediate People's Court of Wuhan Municipality (hereinafter referred to as Wuhan Intermediate Court).

The defendant argued that the simplified use of “Sierxue” (in Chinese) in its working place and promotion materials is a reasonable use of its enterprise name, rather than the use of trademark. Although “Sierxue” and “Xueersi” are identical in characters (in Chinese), they have different orders, meanings and pronunciations. The founding of Hongshan Sierxue Center was earlier than the registered name involved in the case. Hongshan Sierxue Center has fame and brand awareness in Wuhan city, Hubei province, so it has no intention to imitate Xueersi company’s brand name.

After trial, the court of first instance held that Beijing Xueersi Company as the registrant of trademarks No. 5077160, No. 5861449 and No. 9068528, its exclusive right to use the above registered trademarks shall be protected by law.

After the first judgment of Wuhan Intermediate Court, Hongshan Sierxue Center refused to accept the judgment and appealed to Hubei Higher Court.

Hubei Higher Court made the second-instance judgment that the appeal request of Hongshan Sierxue Center could not be established and should be rejected. The first-instance judgment were based on clear facts and applied correct law. Thus, the judgement should be maintained.

August 5, 2019

Source: www.iprchn.com

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