The European IPO rules in favor of Vespa over Chinese scooter copies

A European IP office has ruled in favor of Vespa over its allegations that two Chinese motorcycle brands have copied the design of its Primavera model.

Vespa alleges that two brands, Motolux and Dayi Motor, copied the design of the Vespa Primavera. Worse still, the two scooters were shown at EICMA 2019.  Fiera, the organizer of EICMA, removed the models from the show. The Piaggio Group, Vespa's parent company, then filed complaints with the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) over the two.

EUIPO, in turn, has recently made the design registered by these Chinese companies void. The EUIPO canceled their registration because it was "unable to elicit a general impression different from the registered design" of the Vespa Primavera. Piaggio says these represent an illegal attempt to reproduce its aesthetic decorations.

The Piaggio Group registered the design of the Vespa Primavera in 2013 with three-dimensional patent and trademark applications for the Vespa scooter. The move was intended to protects the artistic value of the Vespa shape — a style icon since 1946 — by copyright.

This case is part of the Piaggio Group’s anti-counterfeiting initiative it has undertaken in recent years. It involves constant monitoring of international design databases and trademarks. In just the last two years, the Piaggio Group has won 50 cases of copyright infringement of the Vespa brand, leading to the cancellation of trademarks registered by third parties.

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