Global luxury brands have recently filed a string of trademark lawsuits against Chinese homegrown brands, fueling controversy in China. After Louis Vuitton (LV) recently won a trademark infringement suit against a beverage brand, it went on to file an administrative suit against China's intellectual property authorities and a civil suit against a retailer, and Tiffany, a luxury jewelry brand under the same LVMH group, has also launched a trademark dispute against a Chinese brand.
At the center of the controversy is Chinese beverage brand Molly Tea (茉莉奶白). Summarizing local media reports, a court in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, ruled late last month that the "four-leaf flower" decorative pattern Molly Tea used on cups and packaging was similar to LV's "Monogram Flower" trademark and recognized trademark infringement.
The court found "a considerable malicious intent" in Molly Tea's trademark infringement. It cited as grounds the fact that since 2022 the company had several trademark applications rejected by the China National Intellectual Property Administration for design similarities. The court ordered Molly Tea to pay about 10.3 million yuan (about 2.2521 billion won) in damages, and the company appealed.
Molly Tea countered from the outset that LV's Monogram Flower motif resembles a four-leaf flower pattern widely used in traditional Chinese decoration, and that the company reinterpreted this traditional motif in a modern way. The company said, "No specific brand can exclusively own a traditional motif that has been used for hundreds of years," and added, "The likelihood that consumers would confuse our brand with LV is low."
According to the Lianhe Zaobao in Singapore, LV also filed suits against the China National Intellectual Property Administration and a retailer. According to the report, LV filed an opposition with the administration, arguing that a trademark applied for by a clothing merchant in Guangdong province was similar to its own. But the opposition was rejected, and on the 16th LV filed an administrative suit against the administration.
It also recently came to light that LV won a suit it filed against a household goods store in Ningbo, Zhejiang province for unauthorized use of its trademark and was awarded 40,000 yuan (about 8.75 million won) in damages. According to the Beijing Daily, LV has filed more than 1,000 trademark lawsuits in China in recent years.
In addition, luxury jewelry brand Tiffany is in a trademark dispute with Chinese sanitary pad brand Aifuni (艾芙尼; Alffany). Tiffany demanded cancellation of the trademark, saying the brand name is similar to its Chinese name "Tifuni (蒂芙尼)." Aifuni countered that the brand name is derived from the pronunciation of the Chinese expression "Aihuni (爱护你; cherish and protect you)," and was not created to evoke Tiffany.
Earlier, Tiffany fought the same dispute over the trademark "Alffany," which a Shanghai-based company applied for in 2017, and authorities recognized the similarity and invalidated the registration.
As trademark disputes between Chinese brands and overseas luxury brands multiply, public opinion on Chinese online platforms has instead shifted to cheering for domestic brands. According to China.com, on the social media platform Weibo (微博), a hashtag criticizing LV at one point ranked among the trending searches and posts calling for a boycott of LV spread. Molly Tea, by contrast, is said to have enjoyed a "cheerleading consumption" effect, with some stores seeing more orders and its official account gaining followers.
Zhao Zanling, a researcher at the Intellectual Property Research Center of China University of Political Science and Law, said, "This litigation shows that global luxury brands are shifting their strategy from focusing on cracking down on counterfeits to more finely protecting the very elements that identify a brand," adding, "However, even if multinational corporations win legally, if they lose the cultural resonance of the local society, it could lead to losses that come with a high expense."