Sichuan rule of law, all over the press
Today (16 july), the case of louis vitit malitti (hereinafter referred to as lv) v. National intellectual property agency, a third person, authorized an administrative dispute before the beijing intellectual property court. This was at least the sixth time that lv brought a trademark administrative action against the national intellectual property authority for the defendant。
On 15 july, around the focus of the trial, the limits of the protection of famous trademarks and the rules governing the commercial use of public cultural resources, sichuan law and law journal journalists interviewed experts, lawyers, re-opened the logic of lv proceedings and interpreted the exemplary meaning of traditional cultural protection in judicial decisions。
Five lawsuits, three and two
Counsel believes lv is at greater risk of losing the case
An administrative action authorizing the enforcement of trademarks is a legal remedy for the parties to challenge the national intellectual property agency's trademark challenge, a declaration of invalidity, and the rejection of a review decision. According to the public sentencing documents, at least the sixth lv case in the first instance of trademark administration, in which the national intellectual property authority was the defendant, was heard. Professor of the university of political law of the south-west noted that there were as many as twenty-three thousand such administrative cases per year throughout the country, that the national intellectual property authority appeared as a regular defendant and that public opinion did not have to interpret lv complaints too frequently。
A clear pattern of victory and failure can be found by combing the findings of the previous five cases. The lawyer section of the shanghai city remittance (shangdu) law firm pointed out, through an analysis of the typology of past jurisprudence, that success and failure correspond to different characteristics of the case. The three cases in which lv won met three common denominators: the complete reble of the lv core flower and the combination of alphabets in third-party trademarks, the visual acclimatization and the close convergence of overall recognition; the existence of explicit subjective malice on the part of third-party bulk accumulations, large-scale luxurious brand markings and resales for profit; and the submission of sufficient market evidence to demonstrate that ordinary consumers are highly susceptible to misrecognition from sources and that brand reputations risk being substantially diluted。
The core features of the two unsuccessful cases are: the proximity of the trademarks to local elements and the marked difference in overall visual effects; the fact that third parties only apply for a single trademark, with no series of charges; and the difficulty of confusion in distinguishing the trade track from the consumer group。
The case at this trial is highly consistent with the characteristics of the previous case of losing. According to publicly available information, the third person, huang guangdong dairy, whose application for registration is a graphic trademark of four-leaf flowers, was approved for use in goods such as class 18 clothing and leather. The lv claimed that the logo was deliberately imitated by its well-known designer, which constituted a bad nameplate, and filed an application for annulment with the national intellectual property agency. In november 2025, the national intellectual property authority ruled that the lv claim was not upheld and that the trademark was valid. Lv contested the administrative decision and then instituted the administrative action。
The reasoning behind the decision by the national intellectual property authority is strongly supported at the level of jurisprudence: on the one hand, there is a clear distinction between the online details of the flowers, the petals and the overall configuration, while on the other hand, the main lv bag, while on the third, the main clothing, the commodity category, is clear; on the other hand, the prototype of the lv, the core four-leaf core, can be traced back to traditional public patterns such as the tang dynasty facing and the tomatolines in china, where the lv is merely fine-lined and does not have the right to monopolize public cultural resources。
Taken together with the established jurisprudence and the specific facts of the case, it is argued that this lv victory is far more difficult than ever before, that there is a greater risk of losing, and that the most likely course of action in the case is for the courts to follow the reasoning of the national intellectual property authority's decision and ultimately reject the lv claim. The very small probability of a winning path exists theoretically, i. E., the court found that third parties had deliberately modelled the lv's original distribution and found that the national intellectual property authority had not legally applied the cross-category protection rules for known trademarks, but that the difficulty of achieving that path could not be insignificant in the present circumstances。
Sichuanichi, a partner in the law firm and lawyer, lin xiaoming, shares this view. In his view, the findings of the national intellectual property authority were based on the fact that there was a clear visual distinction between the alleged tort trademarks and the trademarks claimed by lv, and that it was difficult for ordinary consumers to confuse them directly. “that is to say, the findings of the national intellectual property agency, based on the facts and legal grounds prescribed by law and in accordance with the procedure established by law, are a concrete manifestation of its performance, and it is difficult to obtain court support for its claim if the lv does not prove, in both substantive and procedural terms, that the national intellectual property agency is flawed.” lin xiaoxian put it。
Right-of-right action goes hand in hand with civil defence
Counsel analyzes the strategic logic of the enhanced brand name of lv
Is there a strategic consideration that goes far beyond the case-by-case defence of rights behind lv's ongoing promotion of duality between administrative and civil tort proceedings? It was pointed out that the luxuriant brand's high-frequency brand is a legitimate commercial layout strategy — the indirect realization of an effective expansion of commercial interests by continuously targeting various kinds of proximate trademarks, gradually expanding rights boundaries, strengthening brand reputations and raising market exposure。
At the level of trademark layout, lv has long been registered in the country, covering dozens of commodity service categories such as boxing, clothing, catering, solarization, etc., and even sub-classifications such as buttons, zipping, etc., completely breaking the protective limits of the single main category. As an international brand name, lv enjoys cross-category protection rights under the law and may initiate advocacy against similar labels in different industries。
It is argued that in this strategic framework, the administrative proceedings against which the national intellectual property authority is the defendant play a key role in the “war of pre-determination”, with the central aim of competing for the criteria of judicial determination of the same graphic trademark, “if the lv wins, it will set a binding precedent; if the action is defeated, it will further clarify the rational use of the public pattern”. The alternation of lv's multiple actions is gradually shaping a balanced adjudicative rule between well-known trademark protection and public cultural interests。
The whole picture of the strategy is more visible by combining administrative litigation with civil rights advocacy. The lv v. Jasmine milk white mark tort, a case of widespread concern, has exactly the same legal core as the lv brought - whether traditional public samples can be protected by a single brand alone. On 29 june 2026, the intermediate people's court of suzhou city of jiangsu province handed down a first instance judgement in the case, finding that the four-leaf figure used by “jasmine milk white” violated the right of exclusive use of seven graphic trademarks under the banner of lv, and awarded lv compensation of 10 million yuan for economic losses and a reasonable expenditure on the defence of rights, totalling 1. 3 million yuan. The verdict in this case provoked public opinion and the people's daily commentary questioned the legitimacy of foreign brands to monopolize traditional cultural symbols。
The lv v. Jasmine milk white trademark tort and the action brought by lv in this case are not only at the level of jurisprudence but also at the level of mutual corroboration of the facts of the case. According to public information, “jasmine milk white” had applied for a logo for the four-leaf flower since march 2024, but the application had been rejected because of a registration barrier. However, knowing that trademark registration was blocked, “jasmine milk white” replaced logo in late 2024 with black geometry and large-scale applications similar to the height of the lv. This “intellectually guilty” circumstance contrasts sharply with the fact that the third person indicted by the lv, huang min-yo, applied for a single trademark only, and that there may be substantial differences in the logic of consideration in the judicial decisions. “jasmine milk white” has a complete retroactive logic of jasmine design, but the court finally found that the violation was committed; and the absence of malicious pretences by a third person in this case is the key basis for limiting the scope of protection of the lv trademark。
Counsel analyses the focus of this trial
Lv's winning factor and losing panel
The central review of this trial was whether the administrative decision of the national intellectual property authority to maintain the trademark in question was clear, sufficiently substantiated and correctly applied. A sharp analysis suggests that the trial may have focused on the advantages of the lv's success against the key shorts of failure。
As far as the success of the lv is concerned, the first is the long-term global commercialization and mass promotion of the lv fours logo, which has been recognized by the judicial and administrative authorities as a famous trademark and which enjoys, in accordance with the law, greater protection than the ordinary trademarks. Secondly, the nature of the review of the administrative action determines that the original decision may be directly set aside if the court finds that the national intellectual property authority has a legal margin deviation in the proximate determination of the trademark, confusion of the probability of identification or cross-protection application. In addition, the high judicial protection trend reflected in the tens of thousands of dollar award in the jasmine milk white case provides some reference to the case。
“however, the key briefs pointing to the potential loss of lv cannot be ignored, and they correspond exactly to the characteristics of the previous lost jurisprudence.” it goes on to state that the third person in this case only applied for a single trademark, that there was no mass build-up or large-scale theft of luxury trademarks for profit, and that there was no element of malice necessary for lv to succeed in past cases; that the graphics involved were based on a traditional chinese public pattern and that there was a consensus between the academic community and the administrative review that public cultural resources could not be monopolized by a single brand; and that the overall visual effects of the two trademarks were clear and clearly separated from the clothing category and could not prove a general and stable consumer confusion. It is argued that the combination of three disadvantages makes the situation of lv in this case almost identical to that of its two earlier cases where it was unsuccessful。
In the view of lin xiaoming, following the verdict in the jasmine milk white case, the outcome of this case will further define the extent to which the protection can be extended after the mere generic pattern of flowers has become more visible through long-term use of the brand, which will directly affect the degree of certainty of all luxury brands。
The institutional revelation of the series of proceedings
Clearing of private rights to protect borders and to protect traditional culture of excellence
Regardless of the outcome of the final judgement in this case, the lv series trademark litigation has gone beyond the case of a single brand defence to become a landmark window for observing the deep question of judicial protection of intellectual property rights in our country. It was agreed with lin xiaoming that the series of cases was of great exemplary value in improving the intellectual property protection system and in activating the excellent traditional cultural protection mechanisms in china。
The series of cases provides clear institutional guidance on the legal boundaries of the protection of trademarks. It is argued that, given its longer history, its larger consumer community and its better goodwill than ordinary trademarks, it should also be better protected against ordinary traders taking their “goods” “but there are limits to the protection of popular trademarks, which is the public interest, and in this case historical and cultural patterns”
As far as the preservation of traditional culture of excellence is concerned, traditional patterns such as chinese bouquets, twigs and twigs are part of the public cultural resources of society as a whole, and no enterprise can possess the basic universal model alone. Lin xiaoming says that the protection of trademark rights can be obtained through the creation of derivatives of unique visual transformations that are designed twice by the brand, prompting us to develop, excavate, original and original elements of a good traditional culture, register all kinds of trademarks in advance, through administrative certainty, judicial protection and promotion。
It was also mentioned that, at the legislative and administrative levels, applications for trademarks involving traditional public samples should be strictly distinguished between “simple copying of a public pattern” and “involvement of original art”, and that trademarks that simply misappropriate traditional cultural symbols and impede the normal use of the industry should be rejected or invalidated, so as to prevent capital monopolization of cultural symbols and the abuse of rights in applications for registration and use of trademarks to the detriment of national interests, the public interest or the legitimate interests of others. At the judicial level, there is also a need to take into account the public cultural needs of the society: if trademarks were to be used only in the form of basic traditional textures and did not deliberately adhere to well-known brands, they should be allowed to be used reasonably; they should only be restricted by law if brands were deliberately differentiated and market confusing。
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