Road warriors: victory for Lifetime Products in a Chinese court.

• Author: Haraldsen, Tom
• Position: Lessons Learned - Case overview

There's an old sports axiom that says 1 if a team can win two-thirds of its games at home, and half its games on the road, they'll be champions. But winning road games in business, particularly when it involves litigation, is often much harder to achieve than a championship.

So it was beyond amazing when Clearfield-based Lifetime Products recently scored a victory in a patent-infringement case against a Chinese company--in a Chinese court.

The Shanghai First Intermediate Court entered a judgment against three co-owned Chinese companies--Zhejiang Bestem Furniture Co. Ltd., Zhejiang Bestem Machinery Co., Ltd. and Hangzhou Bestem Furniture Co, Ltd. Last spring, the court found them guilty of infringement against a Lifetime folding utility table design that the company had invented and patented. As a result of the judgment, the court ordered Bestem to pay about $32,000 in restitution to Lifetime.

Though the Chinese co-op, known collectively as Bestem, is appealing the decision, the verdict looks to be a lock.

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"We are thrilled with the Chinese court's finding," said Lifetime President Richard Hendrickson in a release. "More important to us than the monetary compensation is the significance of this achievement of successfully enforcing our Chinese patents in a Chinese court for the very first time."

An Aggressive Approach

Patent protection is at the heart of Lifetime's business plan. As a company that prides itself for innovative design and production, it's "always been interested in protecting that innovation," says Tim Schade, company general counsel.

"Often outside the U.S., particularly in China, we believe that you not only need to get patent protection, but to enforce those protections," he says. "We've taken similar action in Australia, but most of the infringement we've seen has come from China."

In this case, Lifetime officials saw Bestem products at both a trade show in Las Vegas and one in China using the same table edge and corner designs as those Lifetime had invented and patented.

"We did the investigation we felt necessary over there and started a couple of lawsuits," Schade explains.

There's both good and bad aspects of litigation in China, he says. The courts don't require discovery--which means lawyers need to have their ducks firmly in a row before filing a lawsuit. The good part about that, Schade says, is that the discovery aspect of any suit is usually the most expensive and time consuming. "You can...