Case Study | Rapid Response to Sudden Risk: Successfully Secured a “Prevention + Enforcement” Injunction Within 3 Days to Protect Client’s Commercial Interests
Case Study | Rapid Response to Sudden Risk: Successfully Secured a “Prevention + Enforcement” Injunction Within 3 Days to Protect Client’s Commercial Interests
Case Overview
Since 2014, the client has been operating a local Malatang (spicy hot pot) restaurant chain in Australia. As of March 2025, the brand had established 17 stores across major commercial hubs in Sydney, building a strong local reputation and brand influence.
Around 2021, through a third-party introduction, the client decided to collaborate with a business partner to accelerate the brand’s expansion. Although the parties exchanged preliminary drafts of agreements concerning franchising, licensing, and trademark rights, due to the rapid pace of expansion, they proceeded with substantive commercial cooperation without signing a final formal written agreement. During the course of the collaboration, 10 new stores under the brand were opened in Australia.
In mid-March 2025, the client was suddenly notified by the business partner that the partner had unilaterally decided to rebrand all 17 stores in Australia under their own restaurant brand. This decision was made without the client’s consent and was only communicated to the client one day before implementation.
By the time the client engaged Yingke Sydney for legal assistance, two stores located in Sydney’s prime commercial districts had already been rebranded and redesigned without authorization. The incident quickly drew widespread attention on Australian social media, severely damaging the business reputation and goodwill the client had built over the years.
Even more urgently, the client learned that the partner intended to complete the rebranding of the remaining dozen stores within the following week. If this plan were carried out in full, the brand the client had painstakingly developed from scratch in Australia over many years would be at risk of being completely replaced overnight.
Case Strategy
Upon receiving instructions from the client, Yingke Sydney immediately assessed the situation and determined that it was necessary to file an urgent injunction application with the Supreme Court of New South Wales (NSW). The objective was to obtain a court order prohibiting the partner from continuing the rebranding of the stores, and to compel the reversal of branding changes already made to two stores, in order to preserve the client’s commercial interests to the greatest extent possible.
However, due to the complexity and volume of the evidence—most of which was in Chinese—and the urgency of the matter, there was not enough time to translate all documents and prepare English-language materials for a barrister’s review. As a result, no barrister was engaged in this case.
Under these circumstances, Mr. Chen Yin—Executive Director of Yingke Oceania, Principal Solicitor and Managing Partner of Yingke Sydney—personally led the litigation team. Within just three business days, the team independently prepared the full set of urgent injunction application materials, including several hundred pages of court documents, orders sought, affidavits, evidentiary materials, and court submissions.
On 18 March 2025, Mr. Chen appeared before the Equity Division of the NSW Supreme Court on behalf of the client, while the opposing party was represented by a team of barristers.
Despite the absence of a barrister on the client’s side, Mr. Chen conducted a three-hour court hearing, directly engaging with the opposing legal team. The hearing concluded successfully, and the Court granted the client two critical forms of relief:
Prohibitory Injunction – An order restraining the partner from continuing to rebrand the client’s stores;
Mandatory Injunction – An order requiring the partner to restore the two already rebranded stores to the client’s original brand identity and operational status.
This case has since been included in the official case law records of the NSW Supreme Court. For those wishing to access or cite the judgment, the full decision and key rulings can be found via the official case link. Please refer to the original judgment to ensure accurate citation in legal documents or subsequent proceedings.
Case Highlights
1. Bilingual Practice – No Language Barrier (“Search First, Then Translate” Approach)
This case involved a significant volume of Chinese-language materials. Since no formal written agreement had ever been signed between the parties, all cooperation records and evidence were scattered across two years of WeChat conversations. The Yingke Sydney legal team’s bilingual capabilities enabled them to accurately extract key information from the complex Chinese dialogue and directly convert it into formal English legal submissions—without the need for a third-party translator. This not only saved valuable time in preparing the urgent application, but also significantly reduced the client’s costs related to translation and communication, ensuring the injunction application was completed in record time.
2. Rapid Response to Urgent Crisis
Within just three working days, the team completed the entire suite of urgent injunction procedures—case analysis, evidence review, legal drafting, court filing, and appearance scheduling. During this time, the team reviewed over a thousand pages of raw material and produced more than 300 pages of English court documents. Their swift action secured the court’s decision before the opposing party could complete the full-scale rebranding of the remaining stores.
3. Cost Efficiency and Effective Advocacy
No barrister was briefed in this case. Instead, the bilingual solicitors from Yingke Sydney managed the matter entirely in-house. The firm’s Principal Solicitor, Mr. Chen Yin—who has extensive litigation experience—appeared personally before the court. This approach avoided double-layered legal fees and eliminated the time typically required to brief and prepare a barrister, delivering a more efficient and streamlined legal response.
Despite not engaging a barrister, the Yingke team achieved a courtroom outcome that outperformed the opposing side’s barrister-led strategy—securing a favourable result in the most cost-effective and efficient manner possible.
4. Positive Outcome – Comprehensive Injunctive Relief
The Court ultimately granted all the relief sought by the client—not only a Prohibitory Injunction preventing further rebranding, but also a Mandatory Injunction requiring the restoration of the two rebranded stores to the client’s original brand. This level of injunctive relief is rare in Australian legal practice.
Typically, Australian courts are reluctant to grant mandatory injunctions, often favouring prohibitory orders due to the “balance of convenience” principle—which weighs the difficulty, cost, and practicality of enforcement. Even when misconduct is found, courts generally stop short of ordering a reversal unless absolutely necessary.
However, in this case, the Court accepted the full breadth of our arguments and evidence, concluding that the completed brand replacement would cause irreparable reputational harm to the client. The judge therefore ordered the partner to fully restore the two stores’ brand identity and operations within three days.
This order has now been fully enforced, and the two stores have been restored to the client’s original branding—successfully preserving the client’s goodwill and commercial standing.
Conclusion
Yingke Australia’s Sydney office stands out as one of the few local legal teams in Australia capable of handling Chinese-language evidence, drafting English court documents, and independently appearing in court for oral advocacy—all without the need for translation support. With true bilingual legal capability, the team ensures highly efficient dispute resolution, effective cost control, and full protection of clients’ commercial interests.
This case marks the 23rd published court judgment secured by the Yingke Sydney litigation team in Australia, once again demonstrating the team’s professional expertise and practical experience in navigating complex and urgent commercial disputes.
As a common law country, Australia’s court judgments serve not only as rulings in individual cases but also as precedents that become part of the legal system. Every published decision achieved by Yingke Sydney is a reflection of its deep participation in local legal practice, its ongoing accumulation of practical expertise, and a tangible contribution to the evolution of Australia’s legal landscape.
Disclaimer:
This article does not give legal advice. It is intended to provide general information in summary form on legal topics, current at the time of first publication, for general information purposes only. The contents do not constitute legal advice, are not intended to be a substitute for legal advice and should not be relied upon as such. Formal legal advice should be sought in particular matters.