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Amazon Lost the First Instance Trial in China in December

2021-01-08

The civil judgment of the first instance of trademark infringement dispute between Beijing Yanhuang Yingdong Technology Development Co., Ltd. and Amazon Connect Technology Service (Beijing) Co., Ltd. The Beijing Higher People’s Court made a first-instance judgment: the defendants, Sinnet and Amazon.com, stopped infringing on the exclusive right to use the registered trademark of Yanhuang Yingdong Company, should not use the "AWS" logo and similar logos on goods or services; the defendant published a statement in the China Intellectual Property News to eliminate the impact caused by the infringement involved; the defendant jointly compensated the plaintiff for economic losses of RMB 7,6463,000 and the litigation expenses, in this case, the reasonable cost of 260,000 yuan, for a total of 7,6723,000 yuan.

The verdict showed that the "AWS" logo used by Sinnet and Amazon.com Inc., whether the alleged infringement involves the service purpose, content, method, and target of the service item, or the sales channel and target involved the registered trademarks of Yanhuang Yingdong Company are closely related. The relevant public generally believes that they have specific connections and are easy to cause confusion. Therefore, the registered trademarks of Yanhuang Yingdong Company constituted similar services or similar goods.

According to the judgment, Sinnet and Amazon.com have been cooperated to develop related services since August 2016 and have long-term and large-scale use of commercial logos containing "AWS" on the service. Therefore, the relevant public is likely to confuse that the relevant goods or services provided are linked to Sinnet and Amazon.com, and mistakenly believe that Yanhuang Yingdong is an agent of the corresponding service brand of the others or uses the "AWS" trademark for the purpose of gaining the goodwill of others.

Source: China Intellectual Property

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