JUKI Corporation has protected its patent in a court battle in China, as the Jiangsu Provincial Higher People’s Court and Zhejiang Provincial Higher People’s Court ordered Zhejiang Industrial Sewing Machine Co., Ltd. to stop infringing its patent on industrial sewing machines (Chinese Patent No. ZL97121480.8), and to pay the defendant a total of 700,000 yuan for damages caused by the infringement.
Zhejiang Sewing Machine had been using the JUKI patent without permission.
During the trial, Zhejiang Sewing Machine attempted to shift responsibility of the patent infringement to a product vendor on the grounds that the company itself has not manufactured the relevant product. However, both courts denied the company’s claim, and identified it being legally responsible as the producer and vendor of the infringing product.