What's wrong with this lawyer?!

(Once again, the issue of jurisdiction concerning the subject matter was overlooked. This trial should be under the High Court's jurisdiction, so for the sake of Old Zhou, let's create a time warp this time. The previous text has been amended, and we can't trouble Old Zhou again. This sentence will be deleted tonight.)

Handong Province High Court, when Old Tang arrived here, it was just like coming home too.

Although he doesn't visit often, the staff here are quite familiar with Old Tang.

It's just that there are noticeably fewer people here; generally, it's only lawyers who can come to the High Court for first instance filing, as it's almost impossible for ordinary cases to be under the Provincial High Court's jurisdiction for the first trial.

In the filing division, a familiar lawyer greeted Old Tang: "Director Tang is here, oh wow, you brought the cart again?"

Old Tang responded with a smile: "Yes, this case is a bit troublesome, it involves a lot of paperwork."

Intellectual property lawsuits are unavoidable, as a lot of evidence is needed, and this is only part of it, mainly consisting of commercial secret materials provided by Tengfei Company and some other evidence.

For example, the fee invoices given by Tengda, notarization fee invoices for the previously fixed evidence, and the original and photocopies of the confidentiality agreement signed with Tao Zhongcheng, the company's bylaws on commercial secrets, etc...

All these are required; it's not just about convicting someone.

Besides, the most important thing is the determination of the compensation amount.

Why do you go to court? Of course, it's for compensation, but how and how much to compensate must have a legal basis in court.

It can't be whatever amount you say; your calculations must be supported by evidence.

Fortunately, the other party is a listed company, and listed companies must publish financial reports at mid-year and year-end, which should basically be true.

If they publish false financial reports and get caught, they will be heavily fined.

And based on the difficulty of rights protection in the previous case, and the other party's long-term malicious infringement behavior, including but not limited to "continuing to infringe after judgment, and establishing a second even third production line to expand the scope of infringement," Old Tang believes punitive damages should be applied!

In our legal system, punitive damages are seldom specified. Generally, for infringement, it's adjudicated based on the "compensation principle," which means no profit should be made.

Whatever you lost, just let the other party compensate you for it.

However, in certain special areas, there are regulations for punitive damages, such as unfair competition, like infringing on commercial secrets.

Article 9 of the "Anti-Unfair Competition Law" states: Managers shall not engage in the following behaviors infringing commercial secrets.

The fourth paragraph states: If a third party knows or ought to know the employee, former employee, or other units, individuals of the commercial secret's right holder, and still obtain, disclose, use or allow others to use the commercial secret, it shall be deemed as infringing commercial secrets.

And Article 17 of the "Anti-Unfair Competition Law" states:

If a manager violates the provisions of this law, causing damage to others, they shall bear civil liability in accordance with the law.

The amount of compensation for managers damaged by unfair competition is determined based on the actual loss suffered from the infringement;

If the actual loss is difficult to calculate, it's determined based on the infringer's profit from the infringement.

If a manager maliciously infringes on commercial secrets, with serious circumstances, the compensation amount can be determined as more than one time but less than five times the amount determined by the above methods. The compensation amount should also include reasonable expenses paid by the manager to stop the infringement.

This is punitive compensation, which can be up to five times your sales profits!

As for how to determine it specifically, it involves the contents of the "Explanation by the Supreme Court on Application of Punitive Compensation in Civil Cases Involving Infringement of Intellectual Property Rights."

Article 4 specifies: the People's Court can determine as serious in situations where the defendant has: (1) Committed the same or similar infringement act again after being administratively penalized or ordered to bear responsibility by a court ruling;

Therefore, Old Tang's evidence includes the other party's official website announcement about establishing the second production line, which was also notarized during extraction.

Of course, this evidence does not form an evidence chain, so it's also necessary to apply to the court to obtain Dajin Company's safety evaluation report and design document filed at the Safety Supervision Bureau.

Then conduct argumentation and comparison to see if this second phase is consistent with the previous technology, only if consistent can prove that the other party infringed again.

But that's for later; for now, Old Tang's demand is for five times profit punitive damages!

However, there is also an issue here; the five-times punitive compensation regulation in the "Anti-Unfair Competition Law" was revised in 2019.

Therefore, according to the general principle of non-retroactivity of law, the five-times punitive compensation only applies after February 2019; before this, only the original provisions can be observed.

But even so, that number is already extremely shocking!

This is called a complex case, and it takes a long time just for evidence presentation and cross-examination. It's basically safe to say such cases can't be completed in one or two court sessions.

So you can imagine the amount of evidence required, at least the staff in the filing division of the Provincial High Court had their eyes wide open seeing that small cart full like a mountain of paperwork.

"Lawyer Tang, what is this... what are you here for?" Inside the window, a staff member looked at the fully laden cart like a paper mountain and instinctively swallowed.

Old Tang immediately smiled upon hearing this: "What kind of question is that? I'm a lawyer, coming to court is naturally to file a lawsuit, what else? Hurry up and unload it, there's more behind."