On April 15, French electrical company, Schneider Electric (hereinafter called Schneider) agreed to pay 157.5 million Renminbi yuan (23 million U.S. dollars) to China's Chint Group (hereafter referred to as Chint) as a settlement to end a three-year patent lawsuit. Zhejiang Provincial Higher People’s Court helped to the two parties to have reached a global settlement for the alleged patent infringement dispute. Details were not released.
According to the agreement, the Tianjin-based Schneider Electric Low Voltage Co. Ltd., in which Schneider holds 75 percent of stakes, will pay the compensation within 15 days to Zhejiang-based Chint Group for infringing the patent of Chint's low voltage circuit breaker technology.
The case was first tried and ruled in September 2007 at Wenzhou Intermediate People's court as first instance. The court ruled that Schneider should pay more than 330 million Renminbi yuan to compensate for Chint's economic losses due to infringing of Chint.’s utility model patent. The amount of compensation was believed to be the highest in China in intellectual property cases. Schneider then appealed to the higher people’s court.
Schneider also filed a request for invalidation of Chint’s utility model patent before the Patent Reexamination Board. However, the patent was maintained valid by the Board and the request was rejected.
Chint's success in the lawsuit case encouraged the Chinese enterprises to draw more attention to their intellectual property rights and Chinese companies should learn to use the legal weapon to protect their IP rights.
