Recently, Shanghai Huangpu District People’s Court made a decision in favor of Swarovski Company, the world famous crystal manufacturer, over a domain name dispute. The court ordered the defendant Wang Chenjun and his company Shanghai Wangxing information technology Co., Ltd(hereinafter refers to as Wangxing Company) to stop using Swarovski’s four registered trademarks on the website and refrain from selling infringing products bearing Swarovski’s registered marks. The domain name chinaswarovski.com was given to Swarovski Company.
Swarovski Company alleged that the defendant Wang Chenjun and his company registered the four websites including chinaswarovski.com and sold the infringing products bearing Swarovski’s registered marks on the internet. Such act was likely to damage Swarovski’s reputation and violated the rule of fair competition and infringed Swarovski trademark. Swarovski Company then brought the case to the court and requested the defendant to transfer the four domain names without charge and pay 400,000 Renminbi yuan in damages.
In the ruling, the court held that the defendant’s behavior constituted infringement of exclusive right of Swarovski’s registered trademark. Therefore, the court made the ruling in favor of Swarovski and ordered that Wangxing Company stop producing and selling infringing products and pay the plaintiff 9,8000 Renminbi yuan as a reasonable cost.
