Source: Tweakers (Dutch)
Article translated with Deepl:
Athom Holding B.V. and Athom B.V. have won summary proceedings for trademark infringement. China’s Athom Technology and sales platform AliExpress International Netherlands must stop selling infringing Athom products, according to the preliminary ruling.
The court in The Hague ruled on Nov. 12 that China’s Athom Technology and the Dutch branch of AliExpress are committing trademark infringement against Athom, the company behind the Homey smarthome platform. The indicted companies were not present at the trial and the court therefore granted default to Athom Tech and AliExpress NL. In summary proceedings, the court makes a preliminary ruling; the parties may still initiate proceedings on the merits or appeal.
The Chinese company “Athom Tech” sold smarthome products just like Athom until recently, but has to stop doing so for the time being by a European Union-wide court. The company may no longer use the names “Athom” and “Athom smart home” in connection with the importation, promotion, online offering and marketing of smarthome products or similar products. AliExpress is also banned from selling these products.
In addition, Athom Tech is required to take back all products sold within the entire European Union to “professional buyers and distribution locations” and refund the purchase price and shipping costs. The company has two weeks to do this.
In any case, both companies must reimburse Athom’s litigation costs, which amount to over 15,800 euros per company. In addition, the companies risk a fine of 5,000 euros per day or 2,000 euros per product with a maximum of 300,000 euros if they continue to sell the trademark-infringing products. Athom Tech may also face a similar penalty if the return of all relevant products sold is not carried out.
Reaction Athom
Athom co-founder and Commercial Director Stefan Witkamp says in a statement to Tweakers that he is pleased with the judge’s ruling. He explains, “We have known about the Chinese party Athom Technology since 2022. They suddenly started selling smarthome products under the same name years after us. We challenged the company on that and initially they were sympathetic, but in the end nothing changed.”
Witkamp cannot say how much sales Athom has lost due to the trademark infringement, but does speak of image damage: “We regularly saw complaints in comments under reviews of our products about poor return policies and lack of customer service, but that was about Chinese Athom, not about us. In addition, our customer service was occasionally contacted about products that were not ours.”
According to the Dutch company, both Athom Technology and AliExpress have failed to honor previous removal requests. Athom says it has yet to submit requests to the latter webshop to have individual products removed; the Chinese webshop is said to be ‘hiding behind Athom Technology’s trademark’ application. Indeed, according to Witkamp, Athom Technology did file an official European trademark application for the brand name, but did not receive it because of the agreement with the Dutch company.
