Since the Supreme People's Court (the "SPC")
handed down its retrial judgment (2014) Civil Retrial No. 38 on the
"PRETUL Case" , the question of "whether the
use of a trademark on an OEM product constitutes
infringement" has arisen as a topic of heated debate in 2016.
Although the SPC gave an answer to this particular case, it did not
provide explanations on other subsequent questions, which are now
facing people concerned. This article aims to address these
questions by analyzing the SPC's judgment on PRETUL and two
similar cases handled by the Beijing IP Court.
1. Background of the OEM-related trademark question
In the first-ever OEM trademark infringement case in China -
"NIKE International Ltd. v Jiaxing Yinxing Garments Ltd.,
etc." in 2001, the Shenzhen Intermediate People's
Court held that "despite that the Spanish company (the
licensor) had the legitimate right to use the NIKE trademark, the
defendant infringed the plaintiff's trademark rights
