Oaks Infringement Gree Enforced 60.56 Million

On April 13th, Ningbo Aosheng Trading Co., Ltd. (formerly Ningbo Aox Air Conditioning Co., Ltd.) added a new information about the subject of enforcement, with an enforcement amount of over 60.56 million yuan. The case involves a dispute between Zhuhai Gree Electric Appliances Co., Ltd. and the company over the infringement of utility model patent rights. The enforcement court is the Guangdong Provincial High People's Court.

It is reported that Ningbo Aosheng Trading Co., Ltd. was established in September 1993, and Oakes Group holds 98.83% of the company's shares, making it the largest shareholder of the company.

Previously, Ox and Gree had filed multiple patent disputes in court, and the dispute between the two sides had once attracted widespread public attention.

Entangled and entangled, Gree and Ox have staged years of 'enmity and enmity'

In fact, for Gree Electric and Ox, lawsuits have long been a common occurrence, and this "entanglement" has been a battle for more than 10 years.

According to previous reports, Oaks Air Conditioner has been sued by Gree for patent infringement for many times. In 2017 and 2018 alone, Oakes was sentenced by the court for malicious infringement of Gree's patent rights in a total of 27 cases, with a cumulative compensation of nearly 120 million yuan.

According to official Gree news, between 2017 and 2020, Ox was sentenced 27 times for infringing Gree patents.

At the same time, Ox also initiated multiple lawsuits against Gree, but almost all of them chose to withdraw the lawsuit due to patent invalidity or facing defeat.

In addition to patent disputes, "talent competition" has also become one of the sources of accumulated resentment between both parties. According to Pengpai News, since 2010, Ox Company has been using various improper methods to poach more than 300 core personnel from Gree Electric's R&D, quality inspection and other departments, and the methods are constantly upgrading. In addition, Gree Electric also stated that the purpose of Ox Company is not only to "steal" talent, but also to steal Gree's trade secrets, by poaching people to "steal" Gree's core technology or the latest project information in research and development. In response to Gree's accusation of poaching, Oakes stated that the company's recruited personnel have never had any labor arbitration with Gree regarding non competition. They have all recruited talent through normal recruitment channels and will focus on understanding whether the talent has a confidentiality agreement and non competition.

Innovative breakthroughs, both Gree and Ox are taking action

In recent years, Gree has laid out a dual approach in the live streaming industry and increased research and development investment.

In 2021, the appearance of Meng Yutong, Secretary of Dong Mingzhu, increased the attention paid to Gree from the outside world. With the increasing attention of Meng Yutong, the Tiktok account of "Pearl Yutong Selection" has also been opened. In addition, Gree has also established the "Gree Dong Mingzhu Store" and launched it on Tmall and JD platforms.

Gree, who has always claimed to "master core technology", is also generous in its research and development investment. According to financial reports, Gree invested a total of 4.756 billion yuan in research and development expenses in the first three quarters of 2022, with research and development investment accounting for 3.22% of revenue.

High investment has also brought huge returns to Gree. It is reported that as of now, Gree has 37 internationally leading patents and has applied for over 100000 patents, making it the only home appliance enterprise to enter the top ten in China's invention patent authorization for six consecutive years.

After years of ups and downs, Oaks also explored his own path of development.

From the perspective of product prices, the average online selling price of Oaks is still low, but this strategy makes it difficult for Oaks to develop towards the high-end, and competitors are investing heavily in research and development to create high-end products to drive revenue growth. In 2020, due to the joint counterattack of air conditioning giants such as Gree and Midea, and the dual impact of price and "energy efficiency virtual standard door", coupled with the sales model that has been selling directly on the internet, its offline channels were imbalanced, causing Oaks to fall into a predicament.

But Ox is also striving to explore the path of transformation. From 2018 to 2020, Ox invested over 3 billion in research and development, achieving innovative breakthroughs in technology fields such as low voltage, abnormal noise, harsh conditions, comfort, and high drop.

Why are patent disputes frequent in the home appliance industry?

In recent years, with the increasingly perfect patent construction of enterprises and the increasing awareness of intellectual property protection among the public, patent disputes in the home appliance industry have become more frequent, and compensation amounts have also skyrocketed.

Why are patent disputes frequent in the home appliance industry? Some analysts suggest that the main reason is that the scope of patent protection in the field mostly involves technologies such as appearance and structure, which are easy to imitate; Home appliance manufacturing enterprises generally adopt OEM and ODM methods, and many brand parties do not have independent production lines and entrust OEM. Infringers are relatively easy to infringe and have lower costs, and the amount of compensation for enterprise infringement needs to be increased; Big companies have increased their innovation capabilities, but industry homogenization remains severe.

Zhang Jianfeng, Executive Deputy Secretary General of the China Household Electrical Appliances Business Association, believes that this reflects the strengthening of self-protection awareness among home appliance enterprises regarding patented technology and brand image. At the same time, the differentiated innovation ability of enterprises needs to be improved, and the market competition environment is deteriorating.

This indicates that if home appliance enterprises want to achieve more stable and long-term development, in addition to continuous innovation and establishing differentiated competitiveness, they should also maintain a high level of self-protection awareness and ability.

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