Behind The "Shanzhai" Of XRS

A poster that makes people laugh and cry reveals the increasingly fierce reality of the education and training industry in recent years - porcelain touch marketing.

Recently, the K12 educational institution doushen University of Chinese has released a recruitment poster of "learning to think for the new class". The "learning to think" and its logo are highly similar to the trademark of XRS, a well-known educational institution. The poster also says "if you are a respected xes student 0.0 yuan and send it backwards! " The slogan.

However, the founder of Sinotech (hereinafter referred to as "future Chinese") is the founder of Sinotech (hereinafter referred to as "future") Education Company Limited, which is the founder of the company.

The official wechat account of XRS released the article "disdain: unruly Doudou God", accusing the other party of "don't use any tricks to rub the flow".

Subsequently, doushen education successively issued two statements to apologize and rectify. Dou Xin also said in an exclusive interview that "after this incident, no matter what the size of the industry should learn from it. There will be less and less publicity

However, the fact is that in recent years, unfair competition behaviors such as "rubbing off enthusiasm" and "free riding" have repeatedly appeared in the teaching and training industry, and the head organizations such as XRS have become the targets of "bumping into porcelain" and "Shanzhai".

Learn to think about Shanzhai poster event

In the eyes of many Chinese marketing professionals, a lot of bad things have been staged.

According to the statement of XRS, after scanning the code, wechat customer service of doushen University claimed that the new class was a high-end customized Chinese class accumulated by math parents of xes and doushen University Chinese. It is aimed at xes students. Now it is promoted nationwide. For online and offline courses, xes students can enjoy 8 customized courses of 0.1 yuan.

"There is no form of curriculum cooperation between XRS and the organization," the statement said. On the contrary, the organization highly imitates the logo and brand name of XRS, pretending to recruit students in the name of our company. ".

On the same day, doushen Education issued the title "respond to the respect of the academic thinking: retreat, I was wrong.". 》This statement, which was later recognized by Dou Xin as "Shuo smart", said, "the reason why this Oolong event was concentrated in XRS students was that during the summer vacation, a large number of students came from the same institution. Therefore, the recruitment department with limited financial resources thought of targeting the students of the organization accurately in terms of advertising precision Class, targeted preferential decision. ".

"We have never regretted that we have trained a new Chinese teacher at XRS campus. We have never believed in the old saying that the apprentices starved to death," the statement said At the end of the statement, there was an advertisement for the enrollment of doushen language.

Where does this Shanzhai poster come from? Dou Xin, founder of the future of Chinese, said in an interview that "the problem poster came from a channel business in Hunan Province (including the slogan + Logo)".

The so-called channel provider is not a company within the educational institution, but a cooperative relationship, which obtains a share by recruiting students for educational institutions. However, Dou Xin also admits that "learning to think" is the result of brainstorming by the group's planning group, which is the output after considering that "XRS" has been registered as a trademark.

The truth may not be so simple. The 21st century economic report reporter learned that 11 days before the launch of the copycat poster, the Chinese future applied for the "xuelaisi" trademark. At present, the process of the trademark is waiting for the substantive examination.

In addition, six days before the launch of the Shanzhai poster, two companies affiliated to doushen education registered the wechat official names of "xueerlaisi primary school classroom" and "xueerlaisi online school excellent course". At present, there is no content released for these two wechat companies.

"Since the opening of the orientation class, enrollment has tripled to last year, and the number of channels and partners is huge," the statement of doushen Education said.

In fact, some industry insiders pointed out that the root cause of this incident is probably due to the pressure of Pishen education running fast. When rischen acquired the future of Chinese language, it set a very high gambling target.

In November 2018, lischen, a listed company, wholly acquired Chinese future. Since then, rischen all in education, whose main business was information security, was renamed doushen education in August this year.

According to the announcement of that year, Dou Xin promised to achieve net profit of no less than 130 million yuan, 169 million yuan and 210 million yuan respectively from 2019 to 2021. But in the first half of the year, due to the epidemic situation, the performance of doushen education declined seriously. According to the financial report, in the first half of the year, the operating income of doushen education was 713 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 21%; the net profit attributable to the shareholders of the parent company was - 94.72 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 341.86%, and its performance was lower than the industry average level.

This is bound to require doushen education to strengthen its operation in the "post epidemic" period. Dou Xin also admits that "Dou Shen has not done a large-scale active enrollment before."

Frequent Shanzhai behavior

The incident of "learning to think" in Shanzhai also sounded the alarm for XRS. Perhaps for protection purposes, XRS applied for registration of the xes trademark on September 23, 10 days after the poster incident.

In addition, it was registered in April 2017 and successfully applied for registration. Behind the registration of this trademark, there is also a story about porcelain marketing of teaching and training institutions.

At present, there is a local training center in Hongsi District of Wuhan, and there are six training institutions in Tusi district. In June 2017, the notarization conducted by XRS showed that the indoor, outdoor and promotional leaflets of this training institution were marked with words such as "thinking and learning", "thinking and learning education".

XRS then sued the training center. 21st century economic news reporter learned that the case was adjudicated in the second instance last May. The court held that there were only differences in the order of words between the "think and learn", "think and learn education" and the XRS trademark. If only general attention was given, the relevant public would easily confuse the two. Therefore, it was judged that it infringed the exclusive right of XRS registered trademark and compensated 300000 yuan.

"The education and training industry has been quite popular in recent years, and related disputes have arisen accordingly." Xiong Dingzhong, director of Beijing Qinglv law firm, said.

"In such disputes, if consumers are confused, it may constitute unfair competition. According to the degree of counterfeiting of the trademark and the brand name in dispute, the trademark right may also be infringed at the same time." Xiong Dingzhong told the 21st century economic report.

Recently, another case of "touching porcelain" XRS was decided. During the period of 2017-2012, Yushi Education Co., Ltd. started to set up a number of recruitment and training institutions of xuesixing.

According to the judgment, before the start of the summer enrollment in 2018, lexuepeiyou put light box advertisements in many places in Shenyang City, with the content of "99 yuan, lexuepeiyou finished one summer vacation, and the original science group of" Xueersi "junior high school! The word "Xueersi" stands out from other characters.

In addition, lexuepeiyou's wechat company also released the title "the original English sky group of" some thoughts "was strongly settled in Shenyang Lexue. The summer class of the new junior high school was 99 yuan, and Lexue had English! 》Many teachers in charge of learning English.

According to the court, lexuepeiyou's behavior not only has the intention of subjectively attaching to XRS brand influence, thus increasing its own trading opportunities, but also makes itself unjustly enhance the market competitive advantage and obtain more trading opportunities. At the same time, it is easy for the relevant public to give up the choice of XRS and constitute unfair competition.

At the time of enrollment, Le xuepeiyou also carried out false propaganda. It said that a XRS teacher who came from "digging a corner" had "8 years of teaching experience, the former person in charge of the third grade of XRS in Shenyang and the person in charge of chemistry discipline" also said that several other teachers were the relevant discipline leaders of XRS in Shenyang and Tianjin.

However, the evidence provided by XRS shows that the above-mentioned teacher graduated from University for four years and was only a chemistry specialist, and several other teachers were not the subject leaders.

The court held that these publicity activities of lexuepeiyou were inconsistent with the facts and easily misled consumers, which constituted false publicity activities stipulated in the anti unfair competition law.

In the education and training industry, teachers' strength is the key factor affecting the competitive advantage between institutions, and it is also an important factor for students and parents to decide which training institution to choose, and it is also the focus of "tapping corners" among institutions. The head of a head education organization told the 21st century economic report that the teachers in its institution were repeatedly poached with an annual salary of 23 million yuan due to the popularity of online education.

Famous brand of Internet giant

In addition to several cases of "Shanzhai" XRS, it is not only well-known educational institutions that the confusion of "brand-name" and "free riding" and false publicity are the targets.

Shanghai Pudong New Area market supervision and Administration Bureau issued a "decision on administrative punishment" on April 13, 2015, which states that since September 2014, Shanghai Sanlu zero Education Investment Co., Ltd. has used "360 education group" and other contents in its publicity brochure. "360 education group" is a company registered in Hong Kong. It has no employees, has no actual business activities in the mainland, and has no investment relationship with the party concerned. The purpose of using "360 education group" in the publicity brochure of the party concerned is to increase the company's popularity and attract more students in enrollment. The above behavior of Sanlu zero company violates the advertising law and constitutes the act of false publicity.

Since then, Shanghai Sanlu zero Education Investment Co., Ltd. was also sued by Qihoo 360 for infringement of its trademark and unfair competition. The 21st century economic reporter learned that the case was finally settled by settlement.

At the time of the lawsuit, Shanghai Sanlu zero Education Investment Co., Ltd. had been acquired by the predecessor of doushen education, i.e. lischen, and its brand name was changed to lischen study abroad. Up to now, there is also a "solemn statement: the company and Beijing Qihu 360 have no connection".

Coincidentally, Beijing Haidian court recently adjudicated a trademark infringement case of "microblog classroom". The "microblog classroom" involved in the case is not a product of sina Weibo. Its operators are two companies named Hangzhou Tianlang education and Ningbo Yonglang network technology.

Weibo.com and weibo.com, however, have not been reported on weibo.com's product development. However, since then, the two companies have independently operated the "microblog classroom" with the domain name ketang.cn. The home page of the website used "microblog classroom" and "Sina Weibo online education" and other signs, which were finally determined by the court as infringement and compensated 900000 yuan.

Due to the growing popularity of the teaching and training industry, more and more capital and institutions have entered the industry. Chu Zhaohui, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Educational Sciences, believes that there are two reasons for the chaos in education and training institutions: one is that the threshold for education and training institutions is low; the other is that some parents have insufficient discrimination ability and can not correctly analyze their children's needs, so they rashly follow suit.

Chen Yuhan, a judge of Haidian court, said that operators of the education and training industry should standardize their operations and pay attention not to damage the rights and interests of competitors due to their own behavior in the publicity and commercial activities. If the operators implement false or misleading commercial propaganda to deceive and mislead consumers, their behaviors may be regulated by the anti unfair competition law.