Chinese condom company Daxiang Condom (or known as “Elephant Condom”) posted on its official Weibo on April 26 that it was plagiarized by Durex. Daxiang Condom stated that it has formally filed a lawsuit against Durex and Durex’s production suppliers, general distributors and offline distributors on April 21, 2021. At present, the Beijing Intellectual Property Court has formally accepted the case against the court. Daxiang also promised that if it wins the lawsuit, it will donate the full amount of the financial compensation obtained to the “Anti-plagiarism Fund.”
Daxiang stated that Durex’s new 001 condom, which was launched in November 2020, has its size, shape, and cover design very similar to the original “butter box” Chinese national design patent that Daxiang obtained in 2014 and continues to use today. Even the advertising image of the opening method used in the promotion of Durex’s product is almost exactly the same as Daxiang’s 7-year-old slogan of “open with one hand, one second to tell the inside out”.
As of press time, Durex has not made an official response.
Daxiang Condom Official Weibo:
Hello, friends who follow and like Daxiang! Today is World Intellectual Property Day. Daxiang takes this opportunity to say that we have been copied by Durex.
In addition, we have formally filed a lawsuit against Durex and Durex’s production suppliers, general distributors and offline distributors on April 21, 2021. At present, the Beijing Intellectual Property Court has formally accepted the case against the court.
Daxiang has always paid attention to and respected peers. However, we found that Durex’s new 001 condom size, which was launched in November 2020, has its size, shape, and cover design very similar to the original national design patent for “butter box” that Daxiang obtained in 2014 and continues to use today. Even the advertising image of the opening method used in the promotion of Durex’s product is almost the same as Daxiang’s 7-year-old advertising slogan of “open with one hand, one second to tell the inside out” (as shown in Figures 1, 2 and 3 below).
In further investigation, we found that the manufacturer that produced the new product 001 for Durex was an early partner of Daxiang in 2017. Although it is no longer cooperating, the manufacturer has the early production machinery and part of the production technology of Daxiang Butter Box. So we also understand why Durex’s new packaging box can be so similar to our ‘butter box’…
What is even more shocking and worrying for us is that the version of Durex’s new product 001 “borrowed” is most likely our early product design plan. We briefly went on the market that year and quickly withdrew this early product because we detected that this version of the product had a safety hazard in terms of sealing (but please rest assured that the version of the year also fully passed the industry standard regulations, and the upgraded version Daxiang Butter Box has already met the industry standard requirements). Here, Daxiang hopes that Durex will immediately stop plagiarism and immediately remove this product.
Since the establishment of the Daxiang brand in 2013, we have been devoting ourselves to designing a new sleeve packaging ‘butter box’. We have devoted a lot of effort to this design. It took us 18 months from scratch to basic product formation. There are three large versions and countless iterations of small versions. A bare butter box weighs less than 1.5 grams. We have lost more than 6 tons of materials, and we are constantly trial and error. After successfully applying for China’s national design patent in 2014, Daxiang has continued to optimize and upgrade details (this is why the Durex design in the comparison in Figure 2 below has obvious flaws, and the current version of the butter box design is shown in Figure 4 below), We don’t want to and can’t let our ‘child’ be easily taken away!
On the occasion of World Intellectual Property Day, Daxiang, as a Chinese brand, we firmly issue a statement: We will never bow to plagiarism, and we will carry out our rights protection to the end! Daxiang firmly believes that in the protection of intellectual property rights, every time a small confrontation with a huge voice will eventually converge into the resonance of the mountain whistling and the tsunami.
Daxiang hereby promises that if we win the case, we will donate the full amount of the financial compensation we received to the ‘Anti-plagiarism Fund’.
Source: Jiemian News