Can the plagiarism of the first high-profile claims in the furniture industry be curbed?

Recently, the double-leaf furniture sued the Lai's furniture counterfeiting case in Beijing. Since both companies are bearing the aura of “domestic high-end well-known solid wood furniture manufacturing enterprises”, it has caused a lot of shock in the industry.

In fact, because patent applications are time-consuming and laborious, and the results are extremely small, the plagiarism of the furniture circle has become more and more popular in recent years. Many companies have developed the habit of “making it cheaper to hire designers than with high salaries”. So how can we eliminate this dysentery from the roots?

event

The first high-profile claim in the furniture industry

Due to the high similarity between the appearance of the three pieces of furniture and their own patented furniture products, recently, Heilongjiang Qitaihe Shuangye Furniture Industry Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “double leaf furniture”) filed a complaint against Shandong Jinan Aoke Furniture Co., Ltd. "Lai's furniture" was brought to court and the amount claimed was as high as 25.12 million yuan.

The disputes between rights defenders between the two well-known solid wood furniture manufacturers, coupled with such high patent litigation in the domestic furniture industry for the first time, let this furniture appearance patent rights case have attracted attention.

At the beginning of this year, the person in charge of Fuye Furniture discovered the "bedside", "four-door wardrobe" and "porch (porch decoration effect map)" of Lai's furniture production and sales. There are similarities in terms of sales and sales.

As early as July 2010, Fuye Furniture applied for the “Chinese National Design Patent” for its four-door wardrobe, bedside and drawer panel design, and was authorized in December of the same year.

Futaba Furniture believes that these three products produced by Lai's Furniture fall within the scope of patent protection enjoyed by the company and are suspected of infringement. After the appearance of counterfeit furniture, it seriously affects the sales of patented products.

Therefore, the double-leaf furniture is calculated by the unit price of 10,800 yuan for the four-door wardrobe, 3,000 yuan for the bed, and 2000 yuan for the drawer panel. According to the sales of each store for every 10 days, the sales volume is multiplied by the price for one year, and then multiplied by the net profit. (General net profit of furniture is about 30%), and ultimately requires Lai's furniture compensation of 25.12 million yuan.

It is understood that Fuye Furniture and Lai's Furniture are both well-known solid wood furniture manufacturers. As a large traditional solid wood furniture manufacturer in the north, Futaba Furniture costs millions of products for product research and development, and currently has 87 patented products. Lai's furniture went to Beijing in August 2009. In 2010, it was rated as “China's famous brand (key promotion enterprise)” and “China's top ten solid wood furniture brand”, which is regarded as a rising star in the solid wood furniture industry.

Trace back

The plagiarism in the furniture industry is rampant

In fact, before the act of rights defense, the phenomenon of appearance counterfeiting and serious product homogenization has already been rampant in the furniture industry. The 2010 White Paper on China's Home Furnishing Industry shows that the lack of technology research and development capabilities and low patent ownership have become the bottleneck for the development of China's home furnishing industry. In the past two years, with the increasing emphasis on patent design by domestic furniture companies, disputes caused by counterfeiting have continued.

In March of this year, there were two consecutive “plagiarism gates” at the Guangzhou International Furniture Fair. First, the dynasty furniture told the Peacock King to copy a number of patent-protected furniture. After that, Sihai Furniture sued four companies for copying their patents. Design works. Both lawsuits ended with the defendant’s withdrawal from the suspected product.

In April of this year, a furniture factory in Foshan was also ordered by the court to stop production, stop selling infringing products, destroy the molds of finished products and semi-finished products and infringing products, and compensate the plaintiff for economic losses of 35,000 yuan.

"This is a common problem in the whole industry. The counterfeiting phenomenon of well-known enterprises is still so common, and the situation of other enterprises can be seen." Talking about the counterfeiting problem in the furniture industry, a senior industry expert said.

Quest

High cost of furniture design and development

According to relevant information, although China is a big country in furniture manufacturing and a big exporting country, the quality of technical talents is far from meeting social needs.

"There are statistics showing that there are currently less than 3,000 furniture designers owned by domestic furniture companies. Even Guangdong, which has more than 6,000 furniture companies, has fewer than 600 designers. That is, every 10 furniture. There are less than one designer in the company,” said Wen Hao, director of the Guangzhou Art Academy Furniture Design Studio.

Wen Hao said that the number of designer teams in the first-line backbone furniture enterprises is around 10-30, while many small companies do not have full-time furniture designers, and many designers still stay at the level of drafters.

The industry believes that the reason why many companies' furniture design is counterfeit is due to cost-saving considerations. These companies believe that instead of hiring designers with high salaries and taking on greater cost risks, it is better to be economically efficient when copying furniture stores at home and abroad.

As we all know, with the rising cost of raw materials, production and sales in recent years, the overall comprehensive cost of furniture manufacturing enterprises is rising, and the increasingly saturated market makes the enterprise risk awareness stronger and stronger.

“Enterprises develop a new series of products, and they need to invest a lot of money in the early stage. The whole cycle from R&D to launching the market is long. Moreover, new products may not be successful after they are listed. This also has certain risks. Small and medium-sized furniture companies dare not Capital takes this risk and prefers to follow up and imitate the hot-selling new products of large enterprises, and make a fortune, which will lead to serious product homogenization." An industry insider who asked not to be named said that counterfeiting It is impossible to reverse in the short term.

The entry barrier for the furniture industry is low

“The entry threshold for the furniture industry is low, and some only need more than ten million yuan to open the factory. If there are millions of funds for starting a factory, you can basically get the qualifications of some foundries. "The other major reason for the widespread homogenization of products is that the above-mentioned insiders think so."

He introduced that in the past few years, the domestic furniture industry was in a period of rapid development. With the surge in market demand and soaring prices, furniture companies of all sizes have sprung up. However, many small and new-sized enterprises do not have the ability to develop and design independently. They just rely on blindly copying the trend, which leads to the phenomenon of product homogenization in the furniture industry.

From a technical point of view, these companies have lower requirements for employees, such as sofas (sofa decoration renderings), swivel chairs, glass coffee tables and other products, only a few people can produce in dozens of square meters.

In addition, the furniture industry has not yet formed a standard to measure whether a company can enter the industry in terms of capital, scale, quality, and facilities. Therefore, the low barrier to entry has become one of the important reasons for the homogenization of products in the furniture industry.

Patent applications are time consuming and laborious

“The reason why many companies are reluctant to apply for patents is mainly because the procedures are complicated and the time cost is too high.” A well-known designer in the industry who has insisted on original furniture for many years said.

As for the complicated procedures, the designer said: “Filling a table can be tossed for a few months. The form does not correspond to the existing things in the company. Many things need to be edited, which consumes energy and takes time.”

What makes her even more trouble is that the furniture appearance patent has a limitation period of 2 years, 3 years and 5 years.

The designer said that she and the team need at least a year or two to develop a product. If they go through a long patent application process, "it will wait until the product is released in batches, and the patent validity period of the product is coming soon."

Talking about the prevailing plagiarism, she thinks it is difficult to avoid, not to mention that "many companies and plagiarists are not as simple as the maintenance of the image of a product." After all, original products can be relied on by applying for a patent. It is like a person who does not make mistakes is not solely because of legal constraints, but more importantly, he has correct values ​​and moral constraints. "I hope that consumers and the industry can have this concept and respect original works."

Not worth the loss of patent rights

The psychology of consumers “selling small brands to buy big brands” also provides a living soil for counterfeit furniture. When the counterfeiting behavior was discovered, the cost of litigation that was not worth the loss also made the rights defending company discouraged.

Cao Winchao, the former secretary general of the China Furniture Association, said that from the current point of view, after the patented furniture was counterfeited, there were not many enterprises that actually went to litigation. "Because the infringed enterprises are mostly small and medium-sized enterprises, the coverage of the patented products market is small, and the lawsuits The cost is high, and most companies choose to give up. However, if a large enterprise or a company with a large product market coverage is counterfeited, it will choose to sue because it will have a big impact on its sales."

At the same time, the current domestic furniture production capacity and the number of furniture stores are relatively surplus. If there is no court ruling, the store often closes one eye to the infringing enterprises and products. Yesterday, Mr. Yan, Assistant General Manager of Lai's Furniture, told this reporter that the company has delegated the litigation to the lawyers at all times, and the company has not responded to this counterfeiting lawsuit.

Suggest

Protect originality in upstream control

Lai Yanan, head of Duma (Hong Kong) International Co., Ltd., said that for ordinary consumers, plagiarized furniture is not as easy to identify as pirated discs, so it is not realistic to resist imitation furniture from the consumer level.

Nowadays, imitation furniture has become an industrial chain. To truly solve the problem of counterfeiting, we must start from the upstream of the industrial chain. As long as consumers can't buy counterfeit products in the market, counterfeit products will naturally have nowhere to live.

For example, the malls with similar grades are basically two or three, and once the plagiarized furniture is found, the mall will remove it, which is somewhat more meaningful than applying for a patent.

In fact, this kind of situation has occurred in the home furnishing exhibitions in recent years. The organizers often take measures to “please out” the plagiarists. It seems that the furniture circle has gradually paid attention to this problem, but the solution is not systematic enough. Only by controlling the key links in the policy can we solve the problem.

Cultivating designers is a top priority

An academic expert who has specially studied the topic of furniture intellectual property protection said that cultivating cutting-edge designers is a top priority for China's furniture industry.

The expert said that the current domestic professional furniture designers are very scarce. According to incomplete statistics, in the “Furniture Province” Guangdong, there are less than one designer per 10 furniture companies. However, usually a furniture company needs at least three to five designers. From this projection, only one province in Guangdong lacks at least 30,000 designers.

The shortage of design talents, the small number of independent designs, the high cost, and the cheap choice of consumers are forming a vicious circle. Therefore, some designers should be trained to inject a lot of fresh blood into the furniture industry. Once the original initiative is improved, the plagiarism will be restrained.

More importantly, the protection of furniture creativity should be improved from a legal level. At present, furniture designers can apply for the protection of appearance patents, but due to the particularity of the furniture industry, the protection of patent rights on furniture original design is difficult to play.

3.5L Stainless Steel Teakettle

Heavy Duty Tea Kettle,Non Rusting Tea Kettle,All Stainless Steel Tea Kettle,Stainless Steel Revere Ware Tea Kettle

Kingho Housewares.Ltd , https://www.kinghokettle.com