Shanghai DBTEL Industrial Co. Ltd. lately filed two suits at the Shanghai No. 2 intermediate people's court charging Motorola (China) Electronic Ltd. with encroachments on DBTEL's exterior and circuit board design proprietary rights to C289 cellular phones it has put out. The two lawsuits have all been put on file by the court as reported.
The year 1999 saw Motorola's chief model ModIII suffering from a shrunk market and with a large inventory of material at its disposal it had entrusted DBTEL's parental DABA Company and Shanghai DBTEL with the design and manufacture of a mini cellular phone suiting China's market demand. It took the latter two over a year's effort to get rewarded with a new model mass-produced by Shanghai DBTEl under the brand name of MOTOROLAT189 and buying orders from Motorola.
Until April 2002, Motorola unexpectedly stopped placing orders to the phone and put out thereafter its C289 model instead. As found by DBTEL, this C289 model has been put out by its exterior look and also its circuit design in a most similar form to those of T189 to the former of which Shanghai DBTEL enjoys exclusive patent property right under the name of DABA. Meanwhile, DBTEL holds as shown by the design of the phone's exterior look it also owns complete property right to circuit design of the product according to law. Motorola's act constitutes encroachments on the property rights of DBTEL and has brought big losses to DBTEL, said the latter.
DBTEL in its statement of charges asks Motorola (China) Electronic Company immediately stop production and sale of its C289, publicly make open apology to DBTEL and compensate 99 million yuan respectively for the encroachments made and resulting losses DBTEL has suffered. The compensations demanded for the encroachments made make a total of 198 million yuan, at a high record level of the like claims made over property rights known in Shanghai since this year. It is learned Shanghai DBTEL has sent out its lawyer's letter but no feedback has yet been heard from Motorola (China) Electronic Company so far.
( June 24, 2002)
