Recently, the dispute between Guangzhou Procter & Gamble Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Guangzhou P&G”) and a department store has attracted widespread attention. Further investigation by CHAILEEDO has revealed that Guangzhou P&G, as the plaintiff in first-instance cases, has a total of 65 civil cases awaiting trial since the beginning of this year in locations such as Dongtai, Jiangsu Province, Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province, Bao’an District, Shenzhen, and Mengyin, Shandong Province. These cases are all related to trademark infringement disputes, with defendants including supermarkets, daily necessities stores, and grocery stores.
It is worth mentioning that Shanghai Jahwa and Guangzhou Blue Moon, also as first-instance plaintiffs, have faced cases of infringement of their Six Gods and Blue Moon trademarks, respectively. Since the beginning of this year, they have collectively filed lawsuits against over 200 convenience stores and supermarkets. This indicates that as we enter 2024, the battle for trademark protection among domestic and international cosmetics giants has already begun.
At the beginning of the year, Guangzhou P&G launches over 160 rights protection lawsuits
According to publicly available information from Qichacha, as of March 27th this year, Guangzhou Procter & Gamble Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Guangzhou P&G”) has initiated over 160 lawsuits as the plaintiff in first-instance cases related to trademark infringement. CHAILEEDO has noticed that Guangzhou P&G’s lawsuits cover various locations across the country and the cases are being processed in batches in different regions. For example, on January 23rd, lawsuits filed by Guangzhou P&G against five department stores in Huai’an District, Huai’an City, Jiangsu Province, were scheduled for trial on the same day.
Furthermore, from April 9th to April 11th, cases involving eight daily necessities stores, supermarkets, and grocery stores in Dongtai City, Jiangsu Province, will be sequentially heard. In these cases, Guangzhou P&G’s reasons for filing the lawsuits are mainly that the products “Safeguard” soap, “Head & Shoulders” shampoo, and “Pantene” shampoo sold by the relevant stores are counterfeit goods infringing upon Guangzhou P&G’s registered trademark rights. Guangzhou P&G demands that the infringing parties cease the sale of the respective products and compensate for the economic losses incurred.
For example, on February 20th of this year, the China Judgment Document Network published the “First-instance Civil Judgment on the Trademark Infringement Dispute between Guangzhou P&G and JiMei Grocery Store in Jiangshan, Yinzhou District, Ningbo City.” According to Guangzhou P&G, on June 7th, 2023, during their anti-counterfeiting activities, their investigators, accompanied by a notary public, visited JiMei Grocery Store and purchased a bottle of counterfeit “Head & Shoulders” shampoo. After identification, it was confirmed that the products sold by JiMei Grocery Store were counterfeit goods infringing upon Guangzhou P&G’s registered trademark rights.
In response, JiMei Grocery Store argued that on March 31st, 2023, they purchased two bottles of 500g “Head & Shoulders” shampoo, Smooth and Silky variant, from the Meituan Select platform at a price of 27.99 yuan per bottle. They provided an electronic value-added tax invoice dated November 30th, 2023, with Hangzhou Danqi Trading Co., Ltd. as the seller, Guangzhou P&G as the buyer, and claimed that one bottle was for their own use while the other bottle was sold to Guangzhou P&G when they made the purchase. They questioned whether Guangzhou P&G had replaced the product after obtaining evidence, resulting in the identification of counterfeit goods.
However, after an investigation by the People’s Court of Yinzhou District, Ningbo City, Zhejiang Province, the evidence provided by JiMei Grocery Store was insufficient to prove the connection between the products purchased from the Meituan Select platform and the infringing products cited in the case. Moreover, considering the purchase and sale prices, the infringing products were significantly lower priced than genuine products. As a result, the court ruled that JiMei Grocery Store immediately cease the infringing behavior of using Guangzhou P&G’s Head & Shoulders trademark and awarded Guangzhou P&G compensation of 4,000 yuan.
Looking at the timeline, Guangzhou P&G’s initiation of trademark infringement cases as the plaintiff began in 2019. Between 2019 and 2023, the number of stores accused of infringing Guangzhou P&G’s trademark rights, as first-instance defendants, increased from 2 to 50, 7, 154, and 1,094, with a total of 1,307, showing a rising trend.
Regarding the case outcomes, a small number of cases were concluded with Guangzhou P&G withdrawing the lawsuits, while the majority of cases ended with convenience stores and supermarkets being found guilty of infringing the trademark rights. The compensation amounts ranged from around 500 to 73,000 yuan. Calculating based on the minimum compensation amount of 500 yuan, Guangzhou P&G’s claimed amount reaches 653,500 yuan over a five-year period.
Why choose to initiate Rights Protection against Terminal Retail Channels
In fact, not only the international giant Guangzhou P&G but also top domestic daily chemical companies like Shanghai Jahwa and Guangzhou Blue Moon have initiated a new round of rights protection since the beginning of 2024.
According to publicly available information from Qichacha, as of March 27th, Guangzhou Blue Moon has already initiated 36 trademark infringement lawsuits as the plaintiff this year. The defendants involved in these lawsuits include grocery stores, department stores, and general stores. Looking back, since 2016, Guangzhou Blue Moon has initiated over 1,500 trademark infringement lawsuits as the plaintiff in the first instance. CHAILEEDO investigations have found that the reasons cited by Guangzhou Blue Moon in these cases are consistent: the “Blue Moon” laundry detergent sold by the relevant stores infringes on the exclusive rights of the registered trademark “Blue Moon,” and they demand that the infringing parties cease their infringement and pay certain compensation for the infringement.
At the same time, since the beginning of this year (as of March 27th), Shanghai Jahwa has also initiated over 180 trademark infringement lawsuits as the plaintiff. Looking back over time, since 2018, Shanghai Jahwa has initiated over 14,000 trademark infringement cases, with defendants including convenience stores and supermarkets, and the brands involved are almost all “Liushen.”
CHAILEEDO, through a search on the China Judgments Online, discovered that there are numerous civil second-instance cases in the Blue Moon trademark infringement cases. For example, in the “Civil Judgment of the Second Instance of Jixian Liyang Office Jingbin Grocery Supermarket vs. Guangzhou Blue Moon Trademark Infringement Dispute,” the aforementioned defendant, Jingbin Grocery Supermarket, raised several grounds for appeal: firstly, Jingbin Supermarket is a pre-packaged retail supermarket and not a professional counterfeiting factory; secondly, the products sold by the supermarket are provided by the supplier Wang Mobei, and they requested to add Wang Mobei as a party; thirdly, the anti-counterfeiting personnel did not provide conclusive evidence proving that the Blue Moon laundry detergent sold by the supermarket was counterfeit; furthermore, the supermarket questioned the amount of compensation awarded in the first-instance judgment and argued that the evidence collection by the notary was illegal.
In the end, the Henan Provincial Higher People’s Court determined that the first-instance judgment, which ruled that “Jingbin Supermarket must immediately stop selling goods that infringe on Guangzhou Blue Moon’s exclusive rights to the Blue Moon trademark and compensate Guangzhou Blue Moon for economic losses of 8,000 yuan,” was based on clear facts and should be upheld, and the appeal request from Jingbin Supermarket was rejected.
“In modern corporate governance, trademark protection has become an important part of corporate compliance management,” said Shen Youfu, a partner at Beijing Daokete Law Firm, to CHAILEEDO. “A trademark, from being unknown to becoming a famous trademark, requires a company to invest a significant amount of manpower, material resources, and financial resources. A good corporate trademark not only represents the company’s visibility and reputation but also reflects the company’s market competitiveness. In addition to non-litigation measures such as registering defensive trademarks, the ways for companies to protect their trademarks also include litigation measures when faced with infringement, such as filing trademark infringement cases.”
So, when faced with trademark infringement, why did the aforementioned companies choose to initiate rights protection against convenience stores, supermarkets, and other terminal retail channels?
“Wholesale markets for cosmetics in third- and fourth-tier cities, as well as cosmetic shops in county towns and townships, have a serious problem of selling counterfeit and fake products, which seriously affects brand reputation and interests,” said Zou Yu, General Manager of Qinghai Meilida Commercial Co., Ltd.
“The lawsuits filed by daily chemical giants against convenience stores and supermarkets may not
