This is the second analytical article regarding the LV and Jasmine Milk Tea case. Recently, under significant public pressure, the Suzhou Intermediate People’s Court released the full text of the judgment. A Chinese translation of the judgment can be found at the following link. Additionally, the industry has engaged in extensive commentary following the publication of the judgment.
The 2025 trademark infringement decision in Louis Vuitton Malletier (LV) v. Molly Tea, rendered by the Suzhou Intermediate People’s Court, has generated extensive international public discourse, much of which is predicated on misleading interpretations. These include assertions that the ruling confers monopolistic rights upon foreign brands over traditional Chinese decorative motifs dating back millennia, that consumer confusion between mass-market tea products and luxury leather goods is implausible, and that foreign rights holders encounter systemic prejudice within Chinese intellectual property (IP) adjudications. A significant portion of public commentary reaches conclusions without a thorough examination of the comprehensive 42-page judgment, resulting in misapplication of fundamental principles of Chinese trademark law and neglecting the decision’s significance as a transparent, evidence-based precedent for trademark protection within the Chinese marketplace.
For foreign brand proprietors operating in China—particularly those vulnerable to trademark counterfeiting, trade dress misappropriation, or packaging imitation—this case transcends a mere dispute within the luxury sector. It embodies essential judicial standards for trademark adjudication, the judiciary’s approach to common infringement defenses, and regulatory strategies addressing cross-sector reputation exploitation, thereby providing a definitive and practical framework for rights enforcement.
This analysis seeks to rectify prevalent misunderstandings regarding the ruling, distill the principal legal doctrines applied by the court, and present structured compliance recommendations for foreign brand owners in the Chinese market, grounded in binding statutory provisions and judicial interpretations of Chinese trademark law.
I. The Scope of the Public Domain Defense: Differentiating Generic Elements from Protectable Original Designs
A widespread misconception surrounding the case is the belief that LV claimed exclusive rights over the persimmon calyx motif and baoxiang flower pattern—designs found in Chinese art since the Qin Dynasty—or the universally recognized four-leaf clover symbol, which has been embraced across diverse cultures for centuries. This interpretation fundamentally misconstrues the scope of trademark protection under Chinese law: trademark rights do not extend to abstract conceptual motifs but are confined to specific, original designs that have attained distinctiveness through consistent use and function as indicators of commercial origin.
The court’s analysis is grounded in the well-established design space doctrine, a principle derived from design patent law and extensively utilized in Chinese trademark similarity evaluations to assess the extent of creative freedom afforded to designers working with a particular foundational element. In the case of widely used, symmetrical four-lobed decorative motifs, the design space is notably expansive: designers may modify petal contours, line curvature, structural proportions, central composition, texture, and color schemes to generate thousands of distinctly original designs. Within such a broad creative domain, a close visual resemblance between two designs cannot be readily attributed to coincidental use of generic, public-domain material.
Molly Tea presented an unusually thorough public domain defense, submitting over 200 pages of evidence documenting four-lobed designs from diverse historical and cultural sources worldwide. These included decorative carvings from St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice, the 1923 Alfa Romeo racing emblem, SpaceX mission patches, Qin Dynasty persimmon calyx tile patterns, cultural creative products from the Palace Museum, the four-leaf clover design of the National Exhibition and Convention Center in Shanghai, and records of 3,661 existing trademark applications featuring four-leaf clover graphics. The defendant additionally asserted independent creation, contending that the contested design was inspired by traditional persimmon calyx motifs, incorporated petal shapes from four white flowers native to southern China (jasmine, white michelia, gardenia, and osmanthus), and employed a tea bud as the central element. To substantiate this claim, the defendant submitted copyright registration certificates documenting design iterations from 2021 to 2024.
Following a detailed factual examination, the court dismissed these defenses. It first clarified that the four-pointed star mark in question was not an abstract four-lobed shape but a highly specific design characterized by a defined diamond-shaped petal outline, a perfectly circular central dot, consistent line weights and curvature, and a symmetrical structural arrangement. This design originated as a core element of Louis Vuitton’s Monogram pattern, introduced in 1896, and had acquired significant distinctiveness in the Chinese market through 130 years of continuous global and domestic use across products, advertising, and retail environments. The court determined that the design was not a generic public-domain element but a protected original expression intrinsically linked to Louis Vuitton’s brand identity.
Secondly, the court conducted a meticulous, line-by-line review of Molly Tea’s logo development records. The brand’s initial 2021 logo featured soft, rounded, colorful four-petal shapes bearing no visual resemblance to Louis Vuitton’s mark. Over three years of successive modifications, the brand progressively sharpened petal angles to mirror the diamond shape of Louis Vuitton’s design, adjusted line thickness to correspond with the mark’s proportions, incorporated a central circular dot identical to Louis Vuitton’s, and refined the spacing between elements until the 2023 finalized design was nearly visually indistinguishable from Louis Vuitton’s registered mark. The court concluded that the defendant’s asserted creative inspirations—persimmon calyx patterns, white flower petals, and tea buds—were insufficient to account for the near-exact correspondence with Louis Vuitton’s century-old design, given the extensive creative latitude available for original four-lobed motifs. Consequently, the court found the independent creation defense to be untenable.
This ruling establishes a clear, neutral standard applicable to all brand owners, regardless of origin: while market actors are free to reference and adapt public-domain cultural elements, no entity may rely on public domain status as a defense when exact copies of another’s distinctive, registered mark are used in a market with ample room for original design.
II. Assessment of Confusion Likelihood: The Role of Indirect Confusion within China’s Collaborative Marketing Framework
A prevalent misconception asserts that no reasonable consumer would confuse a $3 bubble tea beverage with a $3,000 Louis Vuitton (LV) handbag, given the significant disparities in price, brand positioning, and product category, thereby invalidating any finding of infringement. This argument misinterprets the definition of actionable confusion under Chinese trademark law and overlooks the widespread prevalence of cross-industry brand collaborations in China’s modern consumer market.
Importantly, the case did not invoke the special “well-known mark” cross-class protection provision, which permits renowned brands to prevent the use of similar marks on unrelated goods. LV had previously registered its four-pointed star mark across all pertinent product and service classes, including Class 18 (leather goods and bag charms), Class 16 (paper bags and packaging), Class 21 (drinkware and cups), and Class 43 (café and restaurant services). Molly Tea’s primary business activities—customized tea beverages (Class 43), branded drink cups (Class 21), printed paper carryout bags (Class 16), and branded bag charm merchandise (Class 18)—fell entirely within the scope of LV’s registered trademark protections. Consequently, the case involved clear infringement concerning identical or similar goods and services, obviating the need to establish well-known mark status. This highlights a critical insight for international brand owners: comprehensive, proactive trademark registration significantly reduces the evidentiary burden associated with proving well-known mark status, thereby facilitating more efficient enforcement.
Pursuant to Article 57 of the Chinese Trademark Law and authoritative judicial interpretations, actionable confusion encompasses not only direct confusion—where consumers mistakenly believe that an infringing product is produced by the trademark owner—but also indirect confusion. Indirect confusion refers to the erroneous belief that the infringing party maintains a formal commercial relationship with the trademark owner, such as through co-branding collaborations, licensing agreements, equity interests, or authorized partnerships. The fundamental purpose of a trademark is to preserve a consistent and exclusive association between the mark and its proprietor, ensuring transparency regarding goodwill ownership and preventing consumer deception. Any conduct that engenders a false commercial association, enabling an infringer to capitalize on another’s established brand reputation, undermines the trademark’s source-identifying function and constitutes infringement.
This standard is particularly pertinent within China’s contemporary consumer market, where cross-industry co-branding has become a prevalent and mainstream marketing strategy. Within the ready-to-drink tea sector alone, prominent collaborations between mass-market tea brands and luxury fashion houses, premium liquor producers, global entertainment franchises, and even aerospace initiatives occur with near-monthly frequency. Chinese consumers have become accustomed to anticipating unconventional cross-sector partnerships, rendering price disparities insufficient as a defense against confusion. While consumers do not presume that a $3 tea beverage is manufactured by a luxury brand, they commonly interpret such price differentials as indicative of limited-edition co-branded collections. In the LV case, the brand submitted thousands of notarized social media posts from platforms such as Xiaohongshu, Douyin, and Weibo, wherein consumers shared images of Molly Tea’s packaging and inquired, “Is this an LV collaboration?”, remarked that the packaging appeared “LV-themed,” and sought to purchase limited co-branded merchandise. This evidence provided tangible and observable proof of indirect confusion among the relevant consumer base.
Molly Tea presented two consumer surveys comprising a total of 3,734 respondents to contend that 90% of consumers did not believe the two brands were operated by the same entity. The court dismissed these surveys as inadmissible due to a fundamental flaw in their design: the questionnaires solely asked respondents whether they believed the tea products were produced by LV, rather than assessing whether respondents perceived a commercial partnership or affiliation between the two brands. Consequently, the surveys failed to capture the form of confusion pertinent to the case and were deemed devoid of probative value. This ruling establishes a definitive evidentiary standard for consumer survey data in trademark litigation: surveys intended to demonstrate or refute confusion must evaluate both direct source confusion and indirect confusion regarding commercial affiliation to be considered admissible by the court.
III. Industry Dynamics and Compliance Risks Associated with Reputation Free-Riding in China’s Emerging Consumer Market
The legal conflict between Louis Vuitton (LV) and Molly Tea is not an isolated incident but rather a foreseeable consequence of the structural characteristics inherent in China’s rapidly expanding consumer sectors, which foster strong incentives for visual free-riding. For foreign brand proprietors, comprehending these fundamental incentives is essential for developing proactive and targeted brand protection strategies.
Firstly, trademarks belonging to luxury and premium global brands possess significant symbolic value that extends beyond mere source identification. Decades of consistent brand narrative development, premium market positioning, scarcity marketing, and rigorous quality control have elevated these trademarks into widely recognized emblems of sophistication, quality, and social status, endowed with substantial viral marketing potential. The adoption of visual elements resembling these trademarks enables lower-tier brands to immediately associate their products with the equity of premium brands, thereby circumventing the extensive time and investment typically required to cultivate original brand recognition and favorable consumer perceptions. This phenomenon renders premium foreign brands particularly susceptible to visual imitation.
Secondly, pervasive homogenization within emerging consumer sectors, such as the ready-to-drink tea market, generates intense pressure to achieve differentiation through visual branding. Following years of rapid growth, the tea industry has reached a saturation point where product formulations, ingredient sourcing, and flavor profiles are largely indistinguishable among competitors. Consequently, product quality alone seldom provides sustainable competitive advantage, compelling brands to compete via packaging design, in-store aesthetics, and social media shareability. Visually distinctive packaging facilitates free user-generated content, as consumers share images of aesthetically appealing products on social media platforms, thereby driving organic traffic at minimal expense. Within this context, a subset of brands elect to replicate established premium visual identities as a shortcut to differentiation, rather than investing in original design efforts—a strategy that yields immediate short-term traffic benefits but entails considerable intellectual property infringement risks.
This issue was directly addressed in the court’s dismissal of Molly Tea’s “contribution rate” defense, wherein the company contended that the contested mark contributed negligible value to its profits, citing sales exceeding 10 million drinks in 2022, prior to the adoption of the LV-similar mark. The court found this argument unconvincing, referencing data that demonstrated significant increases in social media engagement, in-store customer traffic, and per-store revenue immediately following the introduction of the LV-similar mark. The court concluded that these gains were directly attributable to the mark’s capacity to invoke LV’s brand prestige and to create misleading consumer perceptions of a collaboration, thereby rendering the infringing design a substantial driver of unlawful profits. This ruling affirms that courts will consider increases in traffic and revenue subsequent to the adoption of an infringing mark when determining damages, even if the defendant had achieved prior market success before employing the infringing material.
IV. Comprehensive Trademark Protection Framework for Foreign Brand Owners in China
The judgment in LV v. Molly Tea establishes a replicable, evidence-based framework enabling foreign brand owners to develop enforceable trademark protection strategies within the Chinese market. This framework is organized around five fundamental, interrelated components.
First, proactive, cross-class trademark registration constitutes the cornerstone of any effective enforcement strategy. China adheres to a stringent first-to-file trademark system, whereby exclusive rights are granted to the initial registrant rather than the first user of a mark. Prior to market entry, brands should secure registration of their core trademarks not only in classes directly associated with their primary products but also across all logically related classes, including packaging, ancillary services, promotional merchandise, and prospective business sectors. This comprehensive approach mitigates gaps that would otherwise necessitate pursuing the more complex and demanding process of obtaining well-known mark recognition for cross-class protection. LV’s strategy of pre-emptive registration across all pertinent classes enabled the brand to circumvent protracted litigation concerning mark fame, resulting in a resolution within months rather than years.
Second, systematic evidence collection aligned with judicial admissibility standards is essential for successful enforcement. The likelihood of confusion remains the pivotal element in trademark infringement claims, with courts placing significant reliance on tangible, documentary evidence rather than abstract assertions regarding mark similarity. Rights holders should implement continuous monitoring mechanisms to preserve notarized records of consumer feedback on social media and e-commerce platforms that indicate confusion about brand affiliation or co-branding arrangements. When conducting consumer surveys to establish or refute confusion, brands must design questionnaires that capture both direct source confusion and indirect confusion concerning commercial relationships, thereby avoiding procedural deficiencies such as those that led to the rejection of Molly Tea’s survey evidence. Additionally, brands should monitor and retain publicly available data on alleged infringers’ traffic, sales volumes, and marketing performance immediately following the adoption of the contested mark to substantiate both confusion claims and damage assessments.
Third, early intervention against low-scale infringement is critical to preventing escalation of enforcement costs and reputational risks. Chinese consumer brands can rapidly expand from small online vendors to national chains with hundreds of outlets within two to three years. Permitting small-scale infringement to persist unchallenged entails two significant risks: first, as infringers grow, they acquire the resources necessary to mount prolonged and costly legal defenses, thereby extending case durations and increasing enforcement expenses; second, prominent local brands often employ narrative framing that portrays foreign rights holders as aggressors targeting domestic enterprises, thereby generating reputational risks that could be averted through timely action. The majority of small-scale infringers will cease infringing activities upon receipt of a properly drafted cease-and-desist letter that outlines statutory liabilities and potential damages, resolving disputes at a fraction of the cost associated with full litigation.
Fourth, evidence-based damage calculations enhance recovery rates and minimize procedural delays. Chinese courts do not award substantial statutory damages absent concrete evidence of loss or infringer profits, and vague claims for large damage awards are routinely reduced to minimal statutory amounts. Rights holders should calculate damage claims utilizing publicly accessible data such as franchise disclosure documents, public revenue reports, tax filings, marketing expenditures, and performance metrics before and after the adoption of the infringing mark to precisely quantify unlawful profits. This methodology significantly increases the probability that courts will grant damage awards sufficient to cover enforcement costs and compensate for lost brand value.
Finally, pre-emptive public communications planning serves to mitigate reputational risks during enforcement proceedings. Alleged infringers confronted by prominent foreign brands frequently adopt populist narratives, framing disputes as conflicts between avaricious foreign corporations and small local businesses or as attempts to “monopolize traditional culture.” Rights holders can mitigate such risks by preparing factual briefing materials prior to initiating enforcement actions. These materials should include timelines of mark development, trademark registration records, evidence of the infringer’s iterative design modifications intended to replicate the protected mark, and instances of actual consumer confusion. Proactively releasing these materials upon filing enforcement actions prevents infringers from monopolizing the narrative, thereby reducing the likelihood of public backlash. It is important to note that Chinese intellectual property courts base their decisions on statutory law and factual evidence rather than public opinion; nonetheless, proactive communications planning helps avoid unnecessary reputational damage throughout the enforcement process.
The LV v. Molly Tea ruling sends a clear and unequivocal message regarding the evolution of intellectual property protection in China: courts apply impartial and equal protection to all trademark holders irrespective of national origin and will not tolerate infringers who seek to justify deliberate copying of distinctive brand assets through public domain or cultural heritage claims. Foreign brand owners should not be dissuaded by misleading public narratives alleging anti-foreign bias or unenforceable intellectual property rights. Through structured pre-emptive registration, evidence collection consistent with judicial standards, and proactive enforcement measures, foreign brands can effectively safeguard their trademark and trade dress rights in the Chinese market, thereby preventing unauthorized exploitation and preserving long-term brand equity. Moreover, the case delineates a clear boundary between legitimate creative use of shared cultural resources and actionable infringement: while innovation drawing upon the public domain is encouraged, deliberate replication of protected brand identifiers intended to mislead consumers and appropriate unearned goodwill will be met with consistent and predictable legal consequences.