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Eleven Plaintiffs in the Sunwoods Case Lose Lawsuit

August 6, 2003

Eleven Plaintiffs in the Sunwoods Case Lose Lawsuit
Recently in Beijing, the Chaoyang District Court reached a final decision in favor of the defendant, Shenzhen Zhongyang Electronic Appliances Co., Ltd., concering the Sunwoods (a brand name for a stereo sound system) trademark infringement case. The plaintiffs in the case were eleven customers who felt they had been decieved by Shenzhen Zhongyang Electronic Appliances Co., Ltd. The court concluded that the accusation of Shenzhen Co. using fraudulent trademarks to deceive customers was not valid.

The eleven customers, including Mr. Wang Haiying, the director of acdemic affairs department of China Legal Research Institute, claimed that they respectively purchased various models of Sunwoods stereo sound systems in 2001 and 2002. At that time, they were told that the products were originally produced and assembled in Denmark. However, on March 15, 2002, at a party hosted by CCTV (China Central Television Station), it was disclosed that Sunwoods stereo sound systems were originally not produced in Denmark, but instead were made in a village of Guang Dong province (a province in the south of China near Hong Kong.). The plaintiff alleged that the merchant fraudulently utilized certified trademarks and deceived his customers with misinformation of the products origin. The plaintiff sought two hundred thousand RMB in compensation.

After conducting various investigations, the court concluded that Shenzhen Zhongyang Appliance Co., Ltd. is the manufacture of Sunwoods stereo sound systems. The company provided its distributors with documents that prove Sunwoods trademarks had formerly been registered in Denmark and approved by the Denmark Trademark Office. Therefore, the court ruled that accusation by the plaintiffs was not valid.