“Courts should fully apply logical reasoning and everyday life experiences, and comprehensively and objectively examine the evidence for calculating the amount of compensation,” SPC vice-president Cao Jianming told a national work conference on IPR trials in Jinan on February 20, 2008, according to the China Daily.
I don’t know if the order or encourgagement to reason logically can have meaningful results. I think this has to be taught during law school and afterwards during the education permanente necessary for every lawyer and judge. But it is clear that the Supreme People’s Court wants the judges to take everything into account and be not too formalistic.
The compensation calculated in the case Yamaha versus Zhejiang Huatian is described as a model. Read more about the Yamaha case of last year here.
Read the article ‘New rules on payouts in IPR cases’ of the China Daily via China.org.cn, read here. Head tip to Mr Jeff Roberts of CIPP’s “IP News This Week”, your 5-minute report of the latest IP news from around the world, read here.
UPDATE: Mr Thomas Chow of China Esquire wrote about and referred to a case that was decided by the Hangzhou Intermediate People’s Court and described by Mr Brad Luo of China Business Law Blog called ‘G2000 v. 2000: Is 20 Million Yuan Enough for Trademark Infringement?’, read here
Perhaps this sort of principle explains the 20 million yuan damages in the G2000 v. 2000 case. (I will have a post on it coming very soon)I do agree though–it is difficult to apply because such a directive is overbroad and rather vague.