*AI-generated translation, for reference only.

[Case Brief]

Jindi Company was the exclusive licensee of the new rice variety "Jinjing 818". Qingengtian Company, without permission, sought potential traders by publishing "agricultural industry chain information matching" in WeChat groups, provided seed transaction information after charging membership fees, negotiated transaction prices, quantities, and delivery time with buyers, and arranged delivery of goods. Jindi Company filed a lawsuit and requested the court to rule that Qingengtian Company stopped the infringement and paid 3 million yuan in compensation for economic losses. The court of first instance held that the involved infringing seeds were not directly sold by Qingengtian Company, which only aided the infringement, and applied punitive damages in support of all the claims of Jindi Company. After Qingengtian Company appealed, the Supreme People's Court held that Qingengtian Company published seed sale information on an online platform, negotiated with purchasers to determine transaction elements such as seed packaging methods, price, quantity, and performance time, and the sales contract was established upon the consensus, so it should be determined that Qingengtian Company committed infringing sale rather than aided the infringement; Qingengtian Company was not a farmer, and the seeds it published and organized for transaction far exceeded the reasonable scale of "farmers' saving and replanting their own seeds", so the defense of "farmers' propagation for their own use" could not be accepted. By referring to the promotional materials of Qingengtian Company and considering the circumstances of infringement in all aspects, it could be presumed that the infringement profit exceeded 1 million yuan; considering its failure to obtain a seed production and distribution license and its sale of infringing seeds in "white bags", which constituted serious circumstances of the infringement, and its refusal to provide relevant account books, punitive damages should be applied according to law. Therefore, taking the infringement profit as the base for compensation, the amount of punitive damages was determined at a higher level, and the right holder's claim for compensation of 3 million yuan was fully affirmed.

[Expert Committee Opinion]

This is a typical case of seed label counterfeiting. The judgment effectively resolved the difficult issues in seed protection, applied presumption to determine the infringement act, reduced the cost of rights protection, ensured that innovators do not suffer losses, and made the infringer pay an excessive price, reflecting the value orientation of creating a sound legal environment for the innovation and development of the seed industry.