On March 14, 2024, a judge from the United States International Trade Commission (ITC) issued an order allowing Future Motion Inc. (the plaintiff) to withdraw the charges against Jiangsu Changzhou Saint Mayo Automobile Industry Co., Ltd. ("Saint Mayo") and Changzhou Gaia Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. ("Changzhou Gaia"), terminating the plaintiff's 337 investigation proceedings against the aforementioned companies. This case is jointly represented by Lawyer Xie Xiangyang from the Shanghai branch and Lawyer Qian Wenjie, Senior Partner of Gaopeng Beijing headquarters.

Case process

On December 5, 2023, the US plaintiff filed a "337 Investigation" application with ITC, claiming that the self balancing electric skateboards and their components exported and sold by four Chinese companies, including Saint Mayo and Gaia, infringed on the plaintiff's US patent, and requested ITC to issue a temporary exclusion order, a general exclusion order, and an injunction. In addition, the plaintiff also applied for a temporary injunction, requesting ITC to ban the import of the investigated product as soon as possible. On January 9, 2024, ITC officially launched the "337 Investigation".

Key to responding to lawsuits

After the plaintiff submitted the application, Lawyer Gao Peng immediately assisted Saint Maiou and Changzhou Gaia in analyzing the case and discussing response strategies. After the official filing of the ITC case, the US plaintiff originally thought that Chinese companies would not respond, so they could easily obtain a temporary injunction and quickly prohibit China from exporting and selling the products involved to the US. After seeing that a Chinese company had hired a team of professional lawyers to actively respond to the lawsuit, the plaintiff realized that the plan had failed, which led to the revocation of the temporary injunction application on January 24th.

After the case transitioned to the normal 337 investigation procedure, we submitted a defense and a large amount of prior technical literature within the time limit specified by ITC, proving that the plaintiff's patent was invalid, and hired expert witnesses to provide professional opinions to ITC. These measures have made the plaintiff aware that if the investigation continues, the patent in question is likely to be declared invalid. In this situation, the plaintiff officially filed an application with ITC on March 13th to withdraw the charges against Saint Mai and Gaia. At this point, we have achieved a comprehensive victory in this case.

summarize experience

According to statistics, in the past 10 years (2014-2023), a total of 733 Chinese companies have been investigated by ITC, of which nearly half of the Chinese companies chose to respond, but only 88 companies ultimately won the lawsuit, with a success rate of about 12%. It is not easy for this case to force the US plaintiff to withdraw the temporary injunction application within one month after filing, and to withdraw the charges against the two Changzhou enterprises within 100 days after filing. In addition to the lawyer's precise grasp of the law and the case, the key to winning the case is for Chinese companies to actively respond to the lawsuit, remain humble and indifferent, and refuse unreasonable settlement.