A Chinese court ordered Molly Tea to pay Louis Vuitton £1.13m after ruling that the company's floral logo infringed seven of the French luxury house's registered trademarks.
The Suzhou Intermediate People's Court in Jiangsu province found that the Shenzhen-based tea chain infringed Louis Vuitton's four-petal floral trademarks, which formed part of the French fashion house's signature monogram.
The court ordered Molly Tea's parent company to pay 10m yuan (£1.1m) in damages and 300,000 yuan (£33,121) more in legal costs, according to Xinhua. It also held the Molly Tea franchise store in Suzhou's Wuzhong Economic Development Zone jointly liable for up to 100,000 yuan (£11,040).
Molly Tea is one of China's fastest-growing premium tea chains, specialising in jasmine-infused drinks and floral milk teas. It operates almost 2,400 stores across 274 cities in 29 provinces in the country as well as outlets in the UK, US, Canada, Australia, Thailand, Indonesia, and Singapore.
The court delivered the ruling on 29 June, although it was not made public until 2 July. The judgment has not taken effect because both parties have 30 days to appeal.
Once the ruling becomes effective, Molly Tea must pay the damages within 10 days.
Molly Tea founder Zhang Bocheng confirmed to The Paper in a telephone interview that they would challenge the decision.
The case centred on a logo the company adopted less than two years ago. When Molly Tea launched in Shenzhen in 2021, its branding featured Chinese characters alongside a jasmine flower bud, giving the chain a distinctly Chinese visual identity.
However, the company replaced that design in 2024 with a black geometric four-petal flower and rolled it out across its stores, takeaway cups, packaging, and promotional material.
It was that redesign that prompted Louis Vuitton to sue in May 2025.
In its judgment, the court said Louis Vuitton's seven floral trademarks had been used for many years on products including handbags and accessories and had acquired a high degree of recognition worldwide. It said Molly Tea’s four-petal flower emblem was highly similar in its design, arrangement, and line work.
Molly Tea argued that its logo represented a jasmine flower, a motif found in nature, and that a tea chain and a luxury fashion house operated in different industries, meaning the consumers wouldn’t confuse the brands.
The court rejected the argument, saying that collaborations between luxury labels and consumer brands had become common, making it plausible that shoppers could assume Molly Tea and Louis Vuitton had an official commercial relationship.
The ruling also rejected the suggestion that the floral motif was merely decorative. Instead, it said, the logo functioned as a trademark because it allowed consumers to identify the source of the company's products and services.
Records from the China National Intellectual Property Administration showed Molly Tea filed multiple applications for similar four-petal floral trademarks between 2023 and 2024 across advertising, retail, catering, and accommodation categories, reported China Daily.
The applications were either rejected, remained under review after rejection, or had been declared invalid. Only one trademark containing the Chinese characters for “Molly Tea” had been approved.
The court ordered Molly Tea to stop using the disputed design and publish statements on the homepages of its official website, WeChat mini programme, and accounts on Weibo, WeChat, Xiaohongshu, and Douyin to address the impact of the infringement.
Molly Tea had replaced the black emblem on its WeChat page with a coloured version by the time the ruling became public, Xinhua reported.
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