On July 15, 2020, Suzhou Intermediate People's Court ruled against 5 Chinese parties and awarded RMB 5 million damages (US$714,000) to Universal Pictures in a copyright infringement case. The infringers were found to have used pictures of Minions on their products without authorization.

1. The plaintiff did not provide evidence to prove its actual loss due to infringement but claimed that damages should be calculated based on reference royalties.

2. The defendants did not provide any evidence of their sales and accounting records. In the trial, it was ESTIMATED that one of the defendants, Qianchixue, alone could have made a profit of RMB 16 million,    based on the evidence collected by the plaintiff.

3. Based on the evidence of sales and the reference royalties collected by the plaintiff, the plaintiff's loss is RMB3.2 million for the unauthorized use on one series of products alone.

4. The court found willful infringement and affirmed that DOUBLE damages should apply.

5. Either the estimated illegal profit or the double of the loss of royalties is more than the claim of the plaintiff (RMB 5 million). The court did not award more but fully supported the 5 million claim.

Source: https://wemp.app/posts/9c8ae0c6-f4bb-4e2f-a9f7-0e66c99ab54a