It is not uncommon for trademarks to be opposed/invalidated, but the trademark war between new energy vehicles and hotels is a bit surprising.
On June 22, 2024, the Beijing High People's Court announced a judgment ruling that the trademark "Weilai Hotel" of Luyue Group was invalid. At this point, the trademark battle between NIO and Weilai Hotel, a subsidiary of Luyue Group, has temporarily ended with NIO gaining the upper hand.
This is the final judgment. This means that in the future, Luyue Group can no longer use "Weilai Hotel" to operate.
According to its official introduction, Luyue Group was founded in 2016 and incubated by Qunar.com, with Zhou Rong, the former chief strategy officer of Ctrip Accommodation, serving as the CEO of the group, and its multiple brands of Huazhu, Tancheng, Weilai, Soxu, Berna, and BEI, have opened more than 2,000 stores around the world so far.
Among them, "Weilai Hotel" is the fuse that caused the trademark dispute - in 2018, Luyue applied for the registration of the No. 32931873 trademark "Weilai Hotel", and in 2020, it was successfully registered.
Founded in 2014, NIO has shown a positive stance in trademark protection in recent years.
In order to prevent others from rubbing their own brands, since 2015, they have applied for trademark registration around "NIO" and "NIO", covering almost all categories. A search on the trademark website found that there are currently more than 2,500 trademark information of NIO.
At the end of 2021, NIO paid attention to Luyue Group's "Weilai Hotel" and immediately filed an application with the State Intellectual Property Office, requesting that the trademark "Weilai Hotel" be invalidated.
Since then, the two sides have launched repeated trademark battles around "Weilai Hotel" and "Weilai", and recently, the No. 32931873 "Weilai" trademark case has finally been hammered.
The Beijing Higher People's Court held that "NIO" and "Weilai Hotel" were similar in terms of calls, meanings, and overall visual effects, and that, according to the general attention of the relevant public, it was easy for the relevant public to mistakenly believe that the services they identified came from the same market entity or that there was a specific relationship between their providers.
In addition, the evidence submitted by Luyue Company was not sufficient to prove that the use of the disputed trademark "Weilai Hotel" before the filing date of each cited trademark was sufficient to enable the relevant public to form a stable association with it.
To put it simply, the court held that the "Weilai" brand already had a high reputation before the trademark "Weilai Hotel" was applied for registration, and regardless of whether Luyue subjectively had the intention to "rub the famous brand", once consumers may misunderstand that "Weilai Hotel" and "Weilai" are related, it means that the two trademarks cannot coexist.
It is worth noting that in Shang Ping Zi [2023] No. 0000158637, NIO also filed a request for invalidation of the "Weilai" trademark of Luyue Group.
NIO believes that Luyue Group, knowing the popularity of the "NIO" trademark, did not make reasonable avoidance, but maliciously imitated and plagiarized the "NIO" trademark, which was not out of normal commercial needs.
The Trademark Office, on the other hand, held that NIO's claim that the "Weilai" trademark was an imitation and plagiarism of the "Weilai" and other series of trademarks lacked factual basis, so it ruled that the disputed trademark should be upheld.
All in all, the judgment of trademark similarity is one of the most common and controversial topics in trademark practice.
Brand competition is an important form of market competition today, and the trademark is not only an icon symbol, but also the main manifestation and core of the brand, and has become an important asset of the enterprise.
Therefore, many enterprises will monitor their trademarks after successfully applying for trademarks, in order to find trademarks that are identical or similar to their own trademarks in time. Once a similar trademark is found, it is possible to file an opposition to it as soon as possible to protect its legitimate rights and interests from infringement.
In an ever-changing market, risks are everywhere. The financial and human investment of enterprises in trademarks and other intellectual property rights cannot be temporary, and must have a long-term plan, and it is best to establish a long-term and stable cooperative relationship with a professional intellectual property agency.