主题：【原创】谈所谓购买民族品牌：感情还是理智 -- 山猫部落

Unless China changed the patent in the recent years, appearance patent protection period in China is 2~ 3 year. In US, it is 14 years. Patent treaty allows each member to set its own protection period.

Set the protection period aside, I don’t think any one can really claim any whole car appearance patent nowadays. 绝大多数的车 since early 1900's 就是四个轮子一个壳子。Neither Geally, nor Martiz can have such patent. Even if Martiz win on this appearance patent claim, Geally is ready to change the design to another generation car.

To challenge Geally patent on whole car appearance is a rather tiny case. It won’t attract many eyeballs either. In here, to annul Geally appearance patent does not mean Geally violate the law either.

To plainly charge Geally stole business secret is pretty straightforward. But the charge is pretty strong, and the legal definition of stealing or business secret is pretty narrow. Either Martiz hit or miss. There is no room to maneuver. I guess Martiz can’t afford if it loss the case, so they bundle 2 very different cases together.

If you talk about lawsuit, you have to follow strictly on legal points.

To complete copy the design itself is not illegal. The interchangeability of the parts or structure itself is not illegal. Otherwise, there is no use for standard. By the way, the automobile industry is quite mature. You can’t accuse someone violate the law merely base on the similarity on parts. Like I said before, the manufacturing, especially how to manufacture of the shape could be secret, but the shape itself is not secret. You can just buy the car from market, dissect it, measure that up. Remember, everything once in public domain, it is not secret.

The key point is if Geally stole the design as business secret.

But the legal definition of stealing, and business secret is very very narrow.

On business secret, you have to have a set of procedures to limit the access to the design, some physical guard to access, some requirement to prevent anyone know the design from disclosing it. If any of the chain is broken, you can not claim it as business secret.

For example, if Martiz allows reading of the design draft in any point of its office building, it is not business secret. If Martiz did not put the design draft right back into the safe deposit right after the reading, it is not business secret either. If Martiz did not penalize 3rd party whoever has access to the design draft had disclosed the info, it is not business secret either.

From the reports I read, some 3rd party just gave Geally the design draft, as they thought Geally as some kind of supplier.

Geally might loss in ethical point, not necessary on legal point.

I am not quite confident about this case due to one reason: Chinese government might not have backbone to stick with legal procedure. Such as the case on Pfizer claim the trademark on 伟哥，Viagra's Chinese trademark. Chinese Patent Office simply just gave the trademark to Pfizer without any legal procedure. But on the Viagra manufacturing/method/mechanism patent, Chinese Patent Office al least let the legal procedure plays a bit.