Case Brief

Beijing North Star Industrial Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "the North Star Group") and its affiliated companies have created several "Tops of Olympic" in the two decades following undertaking the construction of the venues for the 11th Asian Games in Beijing since the 1990s. The North Star Group and its affiliated companies have not only successively undertaken the construction of venues for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, venues for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games, the China National Convention Center and other large-scale government projects, but also have developed and constructed dozens of commercial and residential projects under " ", " " real estate throughout the country, and repeatedly won the "China TOP 100 Real Estate Developers - Top 100 Stars", "China TOP 10 Real Estate Comprehensive Developers", "TOP 10 Leading Brand of China Comprehensive Real Estate Companies – Composite Real Estate", "TOP 10 Leading Brand of China Comprehensive Real Estate Companies", "Award of Most Livable and Best House" and so on, and have high popularity and influence in the industry.

In 2020, a real estate company in Zhejiang Province and in 2021 a real estate company in Hunan Province respectively highlighted the use of "North Star Sunshine City", "North Star Masterwork", "North Star Mansion", "North Star" and other sued logos for publicity, promotion and sales at the marketing site of the real estate property involved, the prominent position of WeChat official account, relevant publicity and marketing advertisements, delivery site and other locations. In order to effectively safeguard the "North Star" brand, the North Star Group entrusted Unitalen Law Office to file a trademark infringement and unfair competition lawsuit to the Haidian Court and launch the first civil rights protection action for the "North Star" real estate brand.

Court Judgement

The People's Court of Haidian District of Beijing made judgments in favor of North Star Group, separately: first, it was ruled that the defendants in the two cases shall immediately stop infringement of the trademark involved and unfair competition; second, it was ruled that the defendants in both cases publish statements on their WeChat official account or official website for 48 consecutive hours to eliminate the impact; third, the defendants in the two cases were ordered to compensate the North Star Group for economic losses and reasonable expenses of 1.08 million yuan and 2.1 million yuan, respectively.

Typical Significance

This is the first case of the North Star Group defending its rights through civil litigation for the protection of its real estate brand. Unitalen's attorneys comprehensively analyzed the licensing fee of the trademark of ownership, the net profit rate of the real estate industry, the brand premium rate and other data, and investigated the real estate trademark infringement cases, providing the Haidian Court with the multi-angle basis for the calculation of damage compensation, and finally obtained more than one million compensation, better maintained the real estate brand value of "North Star", and also built confidence for the obligees in the field of specialized real estate services to safeguard their rights.