BEIJING: A Guangdong provincial court ruled in favor of herbal tea maker Guangzhou Pharmaceutical Holdings after a lengthy trademark dispute with rival JDB Group.
JDB said in a statement on Monday that it would immediately appeal to the Supreme People’s Court, the nation’s top court, after the Guangdong High People’s Court ruled that six subsidiaries of the Hong Kong enterprise had jointly infringed on Guangzhou Pharmaceutical’s trademark and must pay the company 317 million yuan ($43.8 million) in compensation.
The lawsuit was originally filed early in 2014 by Guangzhou Pharmaceutical, which produces the well-known canned red herbal tea Wanglaoji. The dispute has drawn widespread attention from the public and judicial authorities over the years. JDB — which invested in Guangdong by building its first production base in Dongguan, a traditional manufacturing city in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area — started promoting its canned red herbal tea, Jiaduobao, in 2012, according to sources with the company’s website. The Guangdong High People’s Court originally ruled in favor of Guangdong Pharmaceutical in 2018, ordering JDB to pay the company 1.44 billion yuan.
Both companies were dissatisfied — Guangdong Pharmaceutical had sought damages of 2.93 billion yuan — and appealed the judgment. –The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item
