Big Move! RELX Launches Anti-Counterfeit Action, Sues Weike and Magicoke

On June 16, news reported by Blue Hole New Consumption stated that the leading domestic e-cigarette brand RELX has recently filed a lawsuit in a Guangdong court against Weike and its factory, Dongguan Magicoke, involving unfair competition disputes.

This lawsuit involves two defendants: Weike Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd. and Dongguan Magicoke Technology Co., Ltd.

As is well known, pods are one of the important profit points for every brand in the e-cigarette industry. Therefore, being responsible for the e-cigarettes and specific model pods developed in-house is a safety responsibility, business ethics, and social responsibility that every company should uphold.

RELX stated in the lawsuit that Weike, without authorization, privately authorized Magicoke to produce and sell pods compatible with RELX e-cigarettes on a large scale, using terms like "RELX compatible pods" and "RELX and Weike pods can be used interchangeably" in their sales and promotional activities, leveraging RELX's brand recognition to attract consumers and gain improper benefits.

In response, RELX believes that the logos of RELX and Weike are highly similar and used in the e-cigarette field, which can easily mislead consumers into thinking that Weike's products are from the RELX brand or that there is a specific connection between the two.

RELX argues that Weike's compatibility behavior is essentially a form of "counterfeiting," which clearly aims to attach itself to another brand's reputation and seize the fruits of others' labor, causing losses to RELX, which should bear compensation responsibility.

The lawsuit also indicates that RELX believes the aforementioned unfair competition behavior will inevitably lead to a diversion of RELX e-cigarette users, with some products facing the risk of substantial substitution. Furthermore, Weike's actions of leveraging RELX's brand recognition and reputation to gain more trading opportunities violate the principles of honesty and commercial ethics, which not only causes RELX to lose more trading opportunities and suffer commercial losses but also objectively undermines the innovation incentive mechanism in the e-cigarette market, disrupting the normal market competition order.

Based on this, RELX claims that Weike and Magicoke's actions violate the "Anti-Unfair Competition Law," and demands that both bear legal responsibilities such as ceasing infringement, compensating for losses, and eliminating the impact.

According to information from the Chinese trial process information public website, the case was approved for filing by the court on June 2 and was transferred to the trial court on June 3.

As the relevant evidence in this case has not yet been made public, the outside world currently has no way of knowing more detailed information about the case.