Bridgestone Wins Intellectual Property Case in China

Bridgestone Corporation has announced that the company has won a favorable ruling from the Beijing Intellectual Property Court in the case it filed for infringement of its design rights against leading Chinese tire manufacturer Shengtai Group.

Bridgestone had filed the case with the Beijing Intellectual Property Court back in September 2015. According to the lawsuit, Bridgestone claimed that the tire manufacturing and sales activities conducted by Shengtai Group used a truck tire tread pattern that was patented by Bridgestone for the Firestone ST3000 truck tire tread. Hence, the activities of the Shengtai Group violated Bridgestone’s design rights.

In January 2019, the Beijing Intellectual Property Court upheld Bridgestone’s claim and ordered the Shengtai Group to pay Bridgestone damages to the tune of 10 million Chinese yuan (which is approximately 160 million Japanese yen) and now the winning lawsuit has been finalized.

Bridgestone said that it takes any unauthorized use or infringement of its patents, design rights, trademarks, or any other intellectual property seriously as it strives to provide consumers with safe and reliable products. As part of this drive, it is necessary to protect consumers against the proliferation of substandard and potentially unsafe counterfeit tires and such lawsuits are meant to deter those who use Bridgestone’s patented designs or technologies in an unauthorized manner to make lookalike products which could be potentially unsafe or of low quality and thus damage Bridgestone’s hard-earned brand value.