Popular Chinese tea chain Molly Tea has been ordered to pay 10.3m yuan (\u00a31.1m; $1.5m) in damages after a court ruled that its logo infringed a Louis Vuitton trademark, fuelling an online debate over copyright protection.<\/p>\n
Chinese media reported last week that a court in the eastern Jiangsu province ruled that the Shenzhen-based tea company had copied Louis Vuitton’s iconic four-petal flower monogram trademark.<\/p>\n
The decision has divided the public online in China, with a hashtag linked to the case drawing more than 400 million views and tens of thousands of comments.<\/p>\n
The BBC has contacted Molly Tea and Louis Vuitton for comment.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, a court in Suzhou, just east of Shanghai, ordered Molly Tea to stop using of the logo, issue a public apology and to pay damages to Louis Vuitton, according to Chinese state media China Daily.<\/p>\n
The outlet also said that Molly Tea and its affiliated firms had applied for multiple trademarks that were rejected by the China National Intellectual Property Administration.<\/p>\n
Only the trademark containing the Chinese characters for “Molly Tea” was successfully registered, China Daily reported.<\/p>\n
Many Chinese social media users have defended the design of Molly Tea’s logo, noting how many designs used in Western luxury brands have been inspired by Chinese artefacts.<\/p>\n
One commenter on the Weibo platform wrote in Mandarin that he will “drink a cup of Molly Tea daily” to show his support for the company.<\/p>\n
“Give me a break. They’re just taking advantage of the fact that our ancestors didn’t file for patents,” the commenter wrote.<\/p>\n
One user on RedNote, another Chinese social media platform, said: “Such basic geometric shapes have been used everywhere throughout history, not just China.”<\/p>\n
But some online supported the court’s verdict.<\/p>\n
A Weibo user said that those who back Molly Tea’s design should “study law first”, arguing that there is no dispute as Louis Vuitton had already registered the trademark.<\/p>\n
Another said Louis Vuitton is justified in defending its intellectual property and that other brands do not have the right to imitate it, regardless of their industry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Popular Chinese tea chain Molly Tea has been ordered to pay 10.3m yuan (\u00a31.1m; $1.5m) in damages after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":676093,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-676092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=676092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676092\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/676093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=676092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=676092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=676092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}