Finnish Design Patent Infringement Response Strategies - Enlightenment from a Design Infringement Case to Chinese Enterprises

In the process of going overseas, Chinese enterprises often neglect the protection of their own rights intentionally or unintentionally due to their own limitations. This moment of neglect is very likely to bring huge losses to the enterprise. Enterprises here generally refer to all enterprises, not just certain large enterprises or small and micro enterprises.

Here is a typical case.

As a Chinese company with a long history of producing and manufacturing power equipment, Company X has won many honors in China and its products are exported to more than 20 countries and regions in Europe and the United States. Company According to reports, Company X’s products are sold in large quantities in the European market and on several major e-commerce platforms, with impressive performance.

One day in 2021, a customer purchased dozens of Company X products. It seemed that this was just an ordinary purchase by an ordinary customer, and Company X did not take it seriously. But in 2023, Company X unexpectedly discovered a product that was exactly the same as its own company's design on an e-commerce platform.

Shocked, Company X launched an investigation and discovered that the customer who purchased Company Immediately afterwards, he applied for two design patents in Finland based on the purchased product.

Company X was angry and wanted to solve the problem of plagiarism of its products through litigation. Unfortunately, Company

After Yizhima accepted the entrustment, he immediately contacted several Finnish law firm suppliers and provided several solutions to Company X:

Step 1: Check whether Company Y’s design patent application is still within the opposition period. According to Finnish patent law, within 60 days from the date of authorization announcement of a design patent application, anyone can file an objection to the design application to prevent the design from being authorized. Unfortunately, Company Y’s two Finnish design applications have already passed the objection request period.

Step 2: The Finnish lawyer sends a legal letter to Company Y, and attaches evidence that the corresponding product has been publicly sold to prove that the design lacks novelty. In the lawyer's letter, he strongly requested Company Y to give up the design patent. Under Finland's "loser pays" rule, there is a strong implication that the other party will most likely have to bear costs as a result of losing the case.

Step 3: If Company Y still insists on not giving up the design application, it can only file a lawsuit with the Finnish Market Court so that the design patent can be supported by the court and ruled invalid. If the court of first instance cannot achieve the desired result, the appeal can continue to the Finnish Court of Appeal.

Here, we need to remind everyone that unlike China, Finland does not have a review and invalidation procedure similar to that within the Intellectual Property Office. All disputes and disputes related to patent infringement must be moved to the Finnish Market Court. Of course, the costs resulting from litigation are also quite high.

From here, we feel sorry for Company X. If Company X had considered comprehensively back then and completed the layout and protection of intellectual property rights in Europe before the products were sold in Europe, then this lawsuit in 2023 could have been completely avoided.