Seres sues a Guangzhou company for unfair competition and wins 80,000 yuan, sending a strong signal on brand protection.
The fierce hand-to-hand combat in the new energy vehicle arena is no longer confined to factory floors and new car launch events—it has fully expanded into the deep waters of judicial disputes over intellectual property and brand defense. Recently, the Yuexiu District People's Court in Guangzhou publicly served a weighty civil judgment to Guangzhou Fengma Minyao Technology Co., Ltd. In this lawsuit filed by Seres Automobile Co., Ltd., the defendant was ordered by the court to pay Seres 80,000 yuan in total compensation for economic losses and reasonable expenses due to alleged unfair competition.
This 80,000-yuan compensation may seem trivial against the backdrop of an automotive industry where revenues routinely reach tens of billions, but the strong signal it sends is unmistakable: after its sales surge, Seres is now carrying out a long-term, rigid accounting of consequences against the gray profit chains that attach to and feed off its core brand.
Many industry observers accustomed to watching automakers' marketing battles online tend to dismiss such lawsuits as routine legal enforcement. This simplistic logic seriously underestimates the immense wealth-generating power that the name "AITO" carries in today's new energy market. Bolstered by Huawei's ecosystem empowerment and Seres' deep manufacturing capabilities, the AITO series models have evolved into a phenomenal super IP. The brand itself represents natural traffic dividends, a steady stream of customer leads, and extremely high commercial premium.
To understand the underlying logic of this judicial counteroffensive, one must use Tianyancha to penetrate the starkly contrasting corporate structure behind this dispute.
In this unfair competition dispute, the defendant served by public notice is Guangzhou Fengma Minyao Technology Co., Ltd. However, the judicial case details on Tianyancha reveal a deeper point of conflict—the company, in its actual business operations, effectively points to another deceptively similar name: Guangzhou AITO Automobile Sales Co., Ltd.
This is precisely the coldest unwritten rule in the current downstream automotive services and intermediary retail sector. Without any official authorization, some third-party merchants directly register popular vehicle models or core series names—such as "AITO"—as their own corporate names during business registration. These entities then cloak themselves in the legitimate guise of "AITO Automobile Sales" and open stores or start livestreams across offline markets and short-video platforms. The underlying profit motive behind this "impostor posing as the real deal" tactic is to systematically prey on ordinary consumers who lack the ability to distinguish official authorized channels, leveraging the reputation of major manufacturers to funnel traffic to their own private domains, or even covertly selling competing products or providing substandard services.
Seres' decision to use the legal weapon of unfair competition law to forcibly excise this tumor is a clear warning bell for closing the brand loop.
For a long time, emerging EV makers in their brand expansion phase have tended to tacitly tolerate the disorderly proliferation of民间 traffic, even viewing it as a sign of market buzz. However, when a brand matures and per-vehicle profit and user reputation become the decisive factors for long-term survival, this "brand-ambulance-chasing" parasitic model—lacking basic regulatory compliance—quickly turns into a fatal backlash against brand equity. Any irregularity exhibited by these "impostors" in sales or after-sales service ultimately becomes the burden that Seres officials must bear, both financially and in terms of public opinion fallout.
The 80,000-yuan judgment is not merely a financial recovery; it is Seres using judicial force to erect an insurmountable Great Wall of rights protection publicly across the entire internet.
As the industry dividend of new energy vehicles peaks, what tests the underlying strength of an automaker is no longer the flashy pace of software upgrades showcased in PPTs, but rather the rigor of its governance over brand intellectual property and core asset sovereignty. By publicly publicizing the victory in this unfair competition case through public systems like Tianyancha, Seres is issuing a clear strategic warning to the entire automotive intermediary and aftermarket ecosystem: any fly-by-night operation that attempts to operate outside the official supply chain, exploiting information opacity and malicious edge-cutting to reap ill-gotten gains, will ultimately find no place to hide in the cross-departmental, thorough crackdown of a major manufacturer.