Sisson & Banyas, Attorneys at Law, LLC Announces Successful Patent Enforcement in China

Sisson & Banyas, Attorneys at Law, LLC proudly announces the successful enforcement of design patent rights in China on behalf of ORACLE Lighting. The decision came from the Intellectual Property Division of the Suzhou Intermediate People’s Court on June 28, 2020 finding that the Chinese defendant’s knock-off product infringes ORACLE’s Chinese Design Patent No. ZL201830136860.7 covering the design of ORACLE’s popular VECTOR™ Grill for Jeep Wrangler applications.

Knock offs from China began appearing in the market almost immediately after ORACLE’s product launch at the 2017 SEMA Show. The Firm’s attorney – Jeffrey Banyas – spearheaded the efforts to obtain the patent rights on behalf of ORACLE in the U.S. and China. Attorney Banyas and the Firm were then tasked with developing the winning strategy for enforcing ORACLE’s patent rights.

The Firm quickly activated its global network of private investigators and law firms to track down the source of these illegal goods in China and initiate litigation. Pictures and a notarized purchase of the infringing grille directly from the defendant’s warehouse – obtained during the investigation – were probably the most compelling pieces of evidence.

During litigation, the defendant asserted that it developed the product first, on its own, and independent of ORACLE. This assertion proved futile as the Firm assembled all the evidence proving this was not the case. In the end, the Court issued an order stopping the defendant from further infringing ORACLE’s design patent rights and awarded ORACLE significant monetary damages.

Speaking about the decision, Attorney Banyas said that,

We see a lot of misinformation out there when it comes to intellectual property rights in China. Too many U.S. companies take the approach that you are powerless to stop intellectual property infringements in China. ORACLE Lighting decided to buck this conventional thinking and take the fight to the Chinese infringers in their own back yard. I’m hopeful that ORACLE’s success serves as a model for other U.S. companies that they do not have to simply accept overseas counterfeits as an accepted cost of doing business.

The Firm’s Principal Attorney, Ed Sisson, commented that,

ORACLE Lighting finds itself in a small club. While there are several hundred thousand patent infringement cases in the Chinese courts every year, our understanding is that less than a thousand have a U.S. plaintiff. I do not understand the statistic. Unlike a costly win in the U.S. courts which would stop the knock offs only in the US, this win in China stops the Chinese sourced knock offs in every country around the world, and at a much lower cost than litigating in the U.S. More U.S. companies should be taking the fight into the source country like ORACLE.

More information regarding this case can be found at https://www.twice.com/the-wire/chinese-court-sides-with-oracle-lighting-in-case-against-counterfeit-producers-in-china.