Geely Auto is suing WM Motor for violating business secrets.  The Shanghai High People's Court started hearing the case on September 17. The plaintiffs are Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co., Ltd. and Zhejiang Geely Automobile Research Institute Co., Ltd.; the defendant are WM Motor Automotive Technology Group Co.,Ltd. and four of WM’s subsidiaries. The litigation target amount reached 2.1 billion yuan, which is the largest commercial dispute case in the domestic intellectual property industry.

 Since the case was a non-public trial, the complaint was not publicized. Geely is suing four companies under Weimar Automobile, claiming that WM copiedits model GX-7 and requesting financial compensation, and at the same time demanding  to invalidate the patent applications filed by WM.

According to public information, a large number of  WM’s employees had experience in Geely companies. For example, WM's founder Mr. Hui Shen served as vice president of Geely Holding Group, and senior vice President and chairman of China for Volvo Cars. In addition, WM's co-founder Mr. Bin Lu, CFO Mr. Ran Zhang and many of the senior executives  of WM previously worked for well-known automobile groups such as Geely, Volvo and BMW, and participated in the research and development of automotive core technologies.

 As a matter of fact, the tug-of-war between Geely and WM has been around for a long time. As early as October 2018, Geely took the four companies owned by WM to court on the grounds of infringement of trade secrets. Prior to this, the Shanghai Intermediate People's Court had conducted two non-public hearings on the case, but Geely appealed to the Shanghai Higher People's Court, showing that the two sides had not reached an agreement before.

The core of this case is that Geely believes that WM has copied its model GX-7, but the evidence in intellectual property litigation cases is very complicated. The scope and determination of trade secrets is one of the difficulties in this case.