In the latest case of who is dragging who to the court -- apart from Apple set to get sued by battery maker A123 systems for poaching its employees -- Chinese handset maker Xiaomi is looking to press charges against websites selling its phones illegally, infringing on the company's trademark in India.
While Xiaomi is currently facing an ongoing patent dispute with Ericsson, the company is looking to sort out its own infringement matters when it takes on these websites that are selling Xiaomi-made handset without any real consent from the parent company based in China.
In case you don't remember what the earlier Xiaomi-Ericsson lawsuit was all about, Swedish telecom equipment maker had alleged earlier this month that Xiaomi was selling Mediatek-powered smartphones via Xiaomishop.com. This was in violation of an interim order of the Delhi High Court that allowed the company to only sell Qualcomm chipset smartphones.
However, heading back to the topic at hand, the largest smartphone maker in China has told the court that the website in contention was not an authorized seller for Xiaomi products.
"They're infringing on trademarks and they're making the world believe that it's a genuine Xiaomi site, which it is not," The Times of India quoted Manu Jain, head of India operations at Xiaomi. "The products sold on these websites are not meant for India and are sold at significantly higher price points."
"We have written to them multiple times, and we will be taking legal action against them," he added. Jain added that even though Xiaomishop.com site was not functional any more, the company will still go ahead with legal action against it, apart from four to five other sites, which were selling Xiaomi products illegally.
Apart from that, Xiaomi is currently in talks with manufacturing partners Foxconn and Inventec to set up a manufacturing base in India, the company's second most important market after China, apart from moving its data servers here by end of 2015.
"We're holding conversations with Fox-Conn and Inventec, who majorly manufacture for us, to set up an assembly line in India," Jain said. However, the manufacturing location is yet to be decided. Stay tuned for more updates.
