Today, the news that Thailand's Luckin claimed 2 billion yuan from China's Luckin rushed to the hot search.
According to a number of Thai media reports, on the morning of the 19th, the Thai Royal 50R group (50R group) formally submitted a lawsuit to the court, asking the court to sentence China Luckin Coffee to compensate 10 billion (about 2 billion yuan) baht for economic losses, and the court has filed a case to accept it.
@luckincoffee Luckin Coffee reposted the relevant news on December 20 and responded that the situation has yet to be verified about the claim of 10 billion baht by Thailand's fake Luckin. It is worth mentioning that there is also a Thai sentence in the response copy, "ฉันอ่านไม่ออก แต่ฉันตกใจมาก!", which translates into Chinese to roughly mean "I can't read it, but I was shocked!"
Thailand's "Luckin" claimed 2 billion
In a filing with the court, Royal Thai 50R Group stated that it had legally registered the Luckin trademark with the Ministry of Commerce of Thailand in 2020, and that everything was handled in accordance with the rules and procedures of Thai law, and that it was allowed to use the trademark to operate a coffee shop business that sells beverages such as tea and coffee. However, China Luckin Coffee later filed a lawsuit against the Central Intellectual Property and International Trade Court, accusing 50R Group of maliciously registering its trademark, for which the lower court ruled against the defendant. However, the 50R Group considered the judgment unfair and submitted a rebuttal to the court, which won the case on December 1 this year.
The complaint of the Royal Thai 50R Group also stated that in the early days, before the court made a final judgment, China Luckin had repeatedly forced the plaintiff to stop using the trademark, and repeatedly forcibly seized the property of the other party, causing it to suffer serious economic losses. 50R Group also spent a lot of money in the lawsuit, asking the court to award a total of 10 billion baht in compensation to China Luckin Coffee.
The controversy over "true and false Luckin".
Luckin realized that the "Lee Ghost Store" appeared in Thailand in early 2022. A Chinese netizen found the "Thai Luckin" store while traveling in Thailand and mistook it for an overseas store of Luckin Coffee, so he checked in and took a photo and posted it on social media.
In August of that year, Luckin Coffee officially issued a statement saying that Luckin Coffee did not open a store in Thailand, and that the Luckin store in Thailand was a counterfeit store, and said that it had adopted legal means to protect its rights.
As for Luckin's statement, "Thai Luckin" denied it and said that the statement was misleading to consumers.
Comparing the two, "Thailand Luckin" has carried out an all-round "copycat" of the font, color and iconic deer head in the Luckin trademark. The difference from the original standard of Luckin is that at first glance it is only the deer's head, which is just the opposite direction. But if you look closely, the overall LOGO uses color reversal: the original logo of Luckin is a white deer with a blue background, while Thailand Luckin uses a blue deer and a white background. In addition, there is an extra line of Thai text under "Luckin Coffee".
A professional lawyer said that "Thai Luckin" used the name "luckin coffee" in the LOGO, and if Luckin registered this trademark in China, according to Chinese law, this behavior may constitute unfair competition. He explained that trademarks and trade names are signs that allow consumers to identify the goods and services of a company, and if consumers are deliberately confused to make judgments, then it may constitute trademark infringement, or unfair competition and consumer fraud under Chinese law. But this involves the laws of different countries. How to determine this in Thailand also depends on local laws.
According to reports, the first-instance judgment ruled that the registered trademark of the Royal Thai 50R Group was invalid, while in the second-instance judgment, Luckin lost the lawsuit. Industry insiders said that the main reason for losing the lawsuit may be that the Thai trademark system adopts the principle of "first application first registration", and the local trademark registration of the Royal Thai 50R Group in Thailand is one step ahead of Luckin Coffee. Therefore, the group's "Luckin" trademark is legally registered with the Department of Commerce of Thailand.
According to public information, Royal Thai 50R Group is a diversified enterprise, and its subsidiary, Thailand Luckin Coffee Co., Ltd., has legally registered the Luckin brand trademark. As of now, the subsidiary operates more than a dozen Luckin coffee shops in Thailand.
Is trademark squatty also a business?
In recent years, there have been frequent incidents of Chinese brand trademarks being preemptively registered overseas, which has also become an "obstacle" for Chinese enterprises to go global.
Tea brand Chayan Yuese has encountered similar overseas trademark squatting incidents. According to China Youth Daily and other media reports, in 2018, a student from Changsha who went to South Korea preemptively registered the trademark of Chayan Yuese in South Korea and opened a store. Cha Yan Yuese was helpless about this, and said that he had already known about it, but the other party's behavior was legal, and he had no right to interfere.
At the end of 2006, Qiaqia Food claimed that its English trademarks "Chacheer" and "Qiaqia Graphics" used in overseas markets were preemptively registered in Germany by EuroKera, and that the intellectual property protection had been filed with the German Customs, and that the other party required Qiaqia Food to pay a transfer fee to purchase the trademark. In the following seven years, after a series of lawsuits and negotiations, the local court finally decided to revoke the trademark in question preemptively registered by EuroKera and compensate Qiaqia for the loss of more than 1,000 euros.
In addition to the above-mentioned brands, according to incomplete statistics, in recent years, a number of well-known domestic brand trademarks have been preemptively registered overseas, such as "Tsingtao Beer" in the United States, "Zhuye Qingjiu" in South Korea, "Goubuli" buns in Japan, "Zhenjiang Balsamic Vinegar" in South Korea, and "Wang Zhihe" in Germany.
As for the reasons for the overseas preemptive registration of Chinese brand trademarks, trademark patent professionals said that the other party mainly values its huge brand. On the one hand, it can take advantage of the huge brand effect of the preemptively registered trademark to preemptively occupy the local market, and on the other hand, it can also coerce the preemptively registered party to repurchase the registered trademark at a high price on the grounds that the Chinese enterprise has infringed its trademark rights. At present, the protection of trademarks in China is divided into general trademark protection and well-known trademark protection, but the scope of protection is generally limited to China. Overseas, different countries have different levels of trademark protection, some countries will also grant protection to foreign well-known trademarks, but most countries only protect trademarks registered in their own countries.
Editor-in-charge: Jiang Saisai
Inspector Zhang Xiaonan
Source: 21st Century Business Herald, Times Finance, China-Singapore Jingwei, Sina Weibo, Xiaohongshu