Beijing No.1 Intermediate People’s Court recently heard a case relating to trademark infringement and unfair competition. The case was brought by a French company called L'OCCITANE EN PROVENCE(hereinafter refers to as L'OCCITANE) against Guangzhou Meiyue Cosmetics Co.,Ltd (Meiyue) and Guangzhou Jinyue Trading Co., Ltd(Jinyue) and a department store in Beijing due to their sale of counterfeit products bearing the mark of L'OCCITANE and false advertising. A damage of 500,000 Renminbi yuan was claimed.
L'OCCITANE applied for use of the trademark L'OCCITANE in classes of cosmetic and essential oils which was approved for registration in May 2006.
L'OCCITANE argued that the defendants not only used the trademark similar or identical with L'OCCITANE’s registered trademark, but also forged and falsely used the representations of French Standardization Association and claimed that its branded product "CAMENAE" was officially identified by the French Standardization Association.
Before the court, the two defendants claimed that they had filed a patent application for design of the product and package which includes the alleged trademark and device. Therefore, they did not infringe L'OCCITANE's trademark.
The case is still pending.
