Motor Vehicles and Parts News
- Chinese bus maker sues German competitor, blogger for defamation
Date: 22-Jan-2007 Sources: (Xinhua Online)
A Chinese bus maker has sued the German auto company Neoplan Bus GmbH, Neoplan's parent company and its marketing agency for libel, sources with the Chinese company told Xinhua on Thursday.
The Zhongwei Bus & Coach Group, based in the coastal city of Yancheng in east China's Jiangsu Province, claimed that the three defendants have seriously damaged their business reputation by irresponsibly claiming that Zhongwei's A9 bus was a 'copycat design' of Neoplan's award-winning Starliner.
The defendants are Neoplan Bus GmbH, its parent MAM Nutzfahrzeuge AG and the online marketing agency Iven & Hillmann. They have been summonsed to appear at the Yancheng City intermediate court on July 17.
According to Ji Lijun, manager of Zhongwei's public relations department, the defendants 'defamed Zhongwei at a press conference in Beijing last October in a totally irresponsible and unfair manner'.
'We request them to stop defaming us and repair the damage done', said Ji.
Neoplan filed a suit at Beijing No.1 Intermediate People's Court on Sep. 26, 2006, accusing Zonda Industrial Group, the parent company of Zhongwei, of copying the entire design of its Starliner bus.
Zonda denied the accusation, saying that the A9's design was original and had been granted a design patent by the state intellectual property administration.
'Neoplan held a press conference in the name of its parent company in Beijing on Oct. 19, 2006, before the court had made a ruling, and publicized their claim that the A9 had 'stolen' their design. Most press reports directly quoted Neoplan's accusation, greatly denigrating our product,' Ji said.
The dispute was exacerbated by a blog linked to a Der Speigel story about the lawsuit. Hillmann from Iven & Hillmann company posted on the regional Auto blog on Oct. 22 comments to the effect 'this is a vivid example of how rapid and uninhibited the Chinese are when it comes to copying.'
Ji said such comments not only hurt Zonda, but also the entire Chinese auto industry. 'That's why we have decided to take them to court.'
He added that the court should decide whether or not Zonda pirated the design and the defendants are not entitled to spread stories before a judgment is made.
Hillmann apologized on the blog on Jan. 5 and said he did not intend to hurt Sino-German relations, but he also questioned the legitimacy of the Yancheng local court to try the case.
So far Zonda has not received any written apology from the defendants and Yancheng court has received no response to its summons, according to Zonda.
Neoplan said its Starliner bus was released in 2004 and received a 'Bus of the Year' design award on Oct. 20, 2006 at the Bus world Exhibition in Kortrijk, Belgium.
Zonda's bus has been on sale for about two years, and some have been exported to southeast Asian countries and to eastern Europe, according to Zonda's website. The A9 is sold at about a third of the Starliner's price.
Chinese auto makers have been frequent targets of design copying accusations in recent years. In 2005, Toyota lost a design clone dispute in China and General Motors Corp. settled a lawsuit outside court against the Chinese Chery Automobile Co. which was accused of copying GM's design for a subcompact car.
China has been striving to discourage infringements of intellectual property rights (IPR) by increasing penalties to include jail sentences and launching repeated crackdowns, destroying millions of pirated CDs, designer bags and other goods.
Piracy disputes have been on rise in China. Official statistics show that Chinese courts handled a total of 3,567 cases concerning the manufacture of fake products and illegal sales of pirated products in 2005, a rise of 28 percent on the previous year.
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