Recently, Shandong Higher People's Court (hereinafter referred to as Shandong High Court) made a judgment on the trademark infringement dispute case between New Oriental Education Technology Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as New Oriental Company) and Jining Canal Education Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Jining Canal Company), and ordered Jining Canal Company to immediately stop the infringement and compensate New Oriental Company for economic losses and reasonable expenses of 500000 yuan.

New Oriental Company has the exclusive right to use registered trademarks numbered 4339746 "POP", 4215122 "New Oriental" and 9631442 "New Oriental XDF. CN" in the 41st category of services. Considering that Jining Canal Company set up "Jining New Oriental School" without its permission and infringed its trademark rights, New Oriental Company sued Jining Intermediate People's Court of Shandong Province (hereinafter referred to as Jining Intermediate People's Court), requesting Jining Canal Company to stop the infringement and compensate economic losses of 1 million yuan and reasonable expenses of more than 43000 yuan.

Jining Canal Company argued that it had a cooperative school running relationship with Jinan New Oriental School, and its enrollment in the name of New Oriental School was recognized by Jinan New Oriental School, so there was no infringement of the trademark rights of New Oriental Company.

The court of first instance held that Jining New Oriental School and Jining Canal Company used the same logo as the registered trademark of New Oriental Company in their website, enrollment brochures and other places, which easily led to the relevant public mistakenly believing that there was a relationship between the two parties. In addition, the registered trademark of New Oriental Company has high popularity and influence. The defendant intended to operate with the plaintiff's goodwill without permission, and the infringement was obvious. Jining Intermediate People's Court decided that the defendant should immediately stop the infringement and compensate New Oriental for its economic losses and reasonable expenses of 80000 yuan.

New Oriental Company refused to accept the judgment of first instance, appealed to Shandong High Court, requested the court to change the judgment, compensate its economic losses and reasonable expenses of more than 1.04 million yuan, and published an apology in the newspaper.

Jining Canal Company argued that in 2015, it cooperated with Jinan New Oriental School to establish Jining Teaching Center, which was only used as the enrollment agency of Jinan New Oriental School. All the enrolled students were sent to Jinan New Oriental School for training, which did not have a negative impact on the goodwill of New Oriental Company, so it did not constitute infringement.

The Shandong High Court found out after hearing that although Jining Canal Company claimed that it had a cooperative relationship with Jinan New Oriental School, it failed to submit relevant evidence. Jining Canal Company has set up "Jining New Oriental School" by itself since 2013. It uses the plaintiff's registered trademark and claims that it belongs to the New Oriental Company. Moreover, the compilation of teaching materials and teaching management are completely consistent with the New Oriental School. The subjective intent of infringement is obvious and the time is long, and the court of first instance has significantly low compensation amount. Accordingly, Shandong High Court made a judgment, ordering Jining Canal Company to immediately stop the infringement and compensate New Oriental Company for economic losses and reasonable expenses of 500000 yuan. (Zheng Siliang)

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