The worldwide-famous privately owned direct sales company with thousands of franchise stores, The Sunrider Corporation d.b.a. Sunrider International (“Sunrider”), filed a lawsuit at Taipei District Court (“the Court”) against a Taiwanese factory owner, Bountiful Healthcare Technology Co., Ltd. (“Bountiful Healthcare”), for infringing its trademark and other legal rights.

Sunrider argued that it has operated its business of natural herbal products through direct sales franchise stores in over 42 countries and has registered a large amount of trademarks in Taiwan since 1982, such as “LIFESTREAM”, “青翠精華Green”, “翠綠精華Green” and so on. The developers of Bountiful Healthcare, Mr. and Mrs. Chen, who are former distributors of Sunrider, sold similar products under 13 similar marks, including “水藏御方LIVESTREAM”, “青翠丰華HomeGreen” and “翠緹丰華Green” by which Bountiful Healthcare took a free-ride over Sunrider’s goodwill and has infringed Sunrider’s trademark rights due to the confusion and misidentification of the origins of goods occurred by relevant consumers. Bountiful Healthcare denied such accusation and insisted that Bountiful Healthcare did not infringe Sunrider’s trademark rights because Mr. and Mrs. Chen are not representatives of Bountiful Healthcare.

Based on the submitted physical use evidence, the Court decided that Bountiful Healthcare indeed uses the subject marks on its products, so whether Mr. and Mrs. Chen are the representatives of Bountiful Healthcare is not an issue in this case. Moreover, among all the two parties’ marks indicated by Sunrider, Bountiful Healthcare’s marks “水藏御方LIVESTREAM”, “青翠丰華HomeGreen” and “翠緹丰華Green” are similar to Sunrider’s “LIFESTREAM”, “青翠精華Green” and “翠綠精華Green” in appearance, pronunciation and concept. The goods labeled with the foregoing marks are also identical or similar, whereby the likelihood of confusion or misidentification by relevant consumers exists. Thus, Bountiful Healthcare indeed infringed Sunrider’s trademark rights. After considering the competitiveness in related business, the degree of intention and the transaction amount of Bountiful Healthcare’s products, the Court determined that Bountiful Healthcare should pay damages amounting to NTD2 250 000 (about USD84900), which is one thousand times of the average retail price of Bountiful Healthcare’s products, to Sunrider.

In addition to the aforesaid judgment of Bountiful’s monetary damages, Sunrider’s claims regarding infringment of other legal rights were dismissed, thus, each party is entitled to appeal to Taiwan High Court.