The Court held that: The Plaintiff owns the patent for design named "Y". The sofa shown in the furniture exhibition of City M was produced by the Defendant, which looked almost the same as the sofa protected by the patent for design of the Plaintiff. The Defendant, without prior licensing from the patentee, exploited the patent of the Plaintiff for production and business purposes, which infringed upon the patent right of the Plaintiff. However, the Defendant withdrew the display of the sofa immediately according to the requirement of the Association of Furniture Industries of City M and didn''t sell any of them. The Plaintiff didn''t have other evidences to prove that such sofa of the Defendant had been already sold to the market. Therefore, the Defendant''s display of the sofa in the furniture exhibition was the action of offering for sale and which didn''t cause actual losses to the Plaintiff.
As a whole, the Court rendered the judgment that the Defendant should stop infringing upon the patent right of the Plaintiff.
2. Case Review
Offering for sale is one way of exploiting a patent, which refers to the manifestation of intent to sell the commodities by way of advertising, displaying them in the shop windows or showing them in the exhibition, etc.[1] The above-mentioned judgment concerning the infringement upon the patent for design of fabric sofa was given in 2006. The Court held that the Defendant infringed the Plaintiff''s patent right and considered the acts of the Defendant as those of offering for sale by reference to Article 11 of Patent Law amended in 2000[2] and Article 24 of Several Provisions of the Supreme People’s Court on Issues Concerning Applicable Laws to the Trial of Patent Controversies, etc. The law and judicial interpretation at that time only regulated the right of offering for sale of the patent for invention and utility model, which didn''t include relevant provisions concerning the right of offering for sale of the patent for design. Therefore, the judgment of the Court may be of superior consciousness then.
