Recently, the first-instance legal documents of Beijing Cotton Field Textile Co., Ltd. and MUJI (Shanghai) Commercial Co., Ltd., Liangpin Project Co., Ltd. and other related commercial defamation disputes were published, and the trial court was the Chaoyang District People's Court of Beijing Municipality.
Beijing's "MUJI" won the Japanese "MUJI", believing that its reputation was denigrated, and Beijing MUJI was awarded 400,000 yuan.
Muji Japan was established in 1980 with MUJI (Shanghai) Commercial Co., Ltd. as its subsidiary in China.
Miantian Company was established in 2000, and its subsidiary is Beijing MUJI Company.
Muji discovered this "cottage goods" as early as 2001, and in April 2001, Muji of Japan filed an opposition application against the no. 1561046 trademark of Cotton Field Company, the first MUJI trademark applied for in 2000.
On January 7, 2004, the Trademark Office ruled that the trademark No. 1561046 of Cotton Field Company should be approved for registration.
On January 20, 2004, MUJI was not satisfied with the above ruling and filed an application for opposition review with the Trademark Review and Adjudication Board. Subsequently, after the administrative litigation procedures of the first and second instances, the trademark review and adjudication committee upheld the approval and registration of the trademark.
In June 2012, the Supreme People's Court rendered Judgment No. 2, holding that the evidence provided by MUJI could only prove the publicity and use of its "MUJI" trademark in Japan, Hong Kong, China and other places before April 6, 2000, as well as the popularity in these areas, and could not prove that its "MUJI" trademark was actually used in Class 24 towels and other goods in Chinese mainland and had a certain impact, so the judgment upheld the second-instance judgment.
The focus of the dispute between the two parties is mainly on the trademark rights of MUJI in the 24 international classifications. Category 24 is: fabrics and their alternatives; domestic textiles; textile or plastic curtains.
According to the information of China Trademark Network, as of November 4, 2021, there were 68 MUJI trademarks with 24 international classifications, but only 8 of them were applied for registration by Muji in Japan.
Based on the introduction of Muji Japan: Muji was born in Japan in 1980, and mainly promotes various high-quality products such as clothing, daily necessities, and food. The 24 categories are the categories of its main products, and the Trademark Office ruled that the MUJI trademark of Cotton Field Company should be approved for registration, making it difficult for Japan MUJI to carry out normal business activities in China.
In April 2015, beijing Cotton Field Company and Beijing MUJI Company, as co-plaintiffs, sued the Beijing Intellectual Property Court for using "MUJI" on blankets, bedspreads, mattresses, pillowcases and other goods as joint plaintiffs, demanding that the defendants bear legal liabilities such as stopping the infringement, compensating for losses, and eliminating the impact.
In 2017, the Beijing Intellectual Property Court rendered a judgment in accordance with the law, finding that the trademark infringement of MUJI in Japan was established. In addition to stopping the infringement and compensating the plaintiff for more than 400,000 yuan in losses, it is also required to issue a statement for a period of 30 days on Tmall's "MUJI official flagship store" and physical stores in mainland China within 10 days of the effective date of the judgment to eliminate the impact.
On November 4, 2019, the Beijing Municipal Higher People's Court rendered the (2018) Jingmin Zhong No. 172 and 173 Civil Judgments, upholding the original judgment of the Beijing Intellectual Property Court.
On November 10 of that year, Tmall's "MUJI official flagship store" and offline physical stores issued a statement saying that in the trademark categories such as cloth, towels, and bedspreads, the "MUJI" trademark was preemptively registered by other companies.
In this regard, the Cotton Field Company believes that this is a rumor spread by the Japanese MUJI side, and leads the public to believe that the "MUJI" towels, quilts and other commodities of the Cotton Field Company are copycat goods, causing losses to the Cotton Field Company and constituting commercial denigration.
Therefore, Cotton Field Company sued the Japanese MUJI party, asking the court to order the Japanese MUJI party to compensate the japanese MUJI party for the economic losses caused by the commercial defamation behavior to the company, and at the same time compensate the company for the reasonable expenses paid by the company to stop the infringement of 100,000 yuan, and requested the court to order the Japanese MUJI party to issue a statement in the official flagship stores of Tmall and JD.com, the official WeChat public account and all the physical stores of the Chinese mainland, the Economic Daily, and the Phoenix Network for one month to remove the impact.
In July 2021, the Chaoyang People's Court of Beijing Municipality found in accordance with the law that the public statement previously issued by MUJI in Japan objectively contradicted the facts, which actually derogated the goodwill of Cotton Field Company, and the commercial defamation was established. In the end, the Japanese MUJI party was ordered to compensate the cotton field company for economic losses of 300,000 yuan and the lawyer fees of the cotton field company of 100,000 yuan.
Related cases
Chinese Jordan and American Jordan
On April 8, 2020, the Supreme People's Court made a ruling on the previously controversial US air jordan brand lawsuit against China Qiaodan Sports Company for trademark infringement, and the alleged ruling, first-instance and second-instance judgments found that the facts and applicable law were all erroneous and should be revoked, and the 6020578 "Qiaodan + Graphics" trademark on The 25th class of clothing, shoes, hats and socks of Qiaodan Sports Company was revoked. This judgment is final.
At that time, I vaguely remembered the Chinese Jordan explanation: the Chinese Jordan trademark figure, there is no specific image, so it is not certain that it is Jordan himself, and the most important point is that the Chinese Jordan trademark figure holds a ping-pong racket in his hand, not a basketball.
Of course, there are new Balance and so on, especially on October 29, the founder of the American social giant Facebook, Zuckerberg, announced that Facebook was renamed:meta. That is, the "meta" of the "metacosm".
On the same day, Baidu Online Network Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd. submitted an application for registration of the "metaapp" trademark. According to the Tianyancha website, Baidu's "metaapp" trademark status is "trademark application", involving categories such as website services and scientific instruments. NetEase also applied for the registration of trademarks such as "NetEase Meta universe", "Thunder Fire Meta universe" and "Fuxi yuan universe", and the international classification involved advertising sales, education and entertainment, website services, etc. The number of trademarks registered in Metacosm has also increased dramatically!
In the case that Facebook (meta) cannot enter China, similar preemptive behavior may still be the same embarrassing situation as MUJI!
Apparently, the Cotton Field Company has preemptively registered the trademark of Japan's MUJI.
For ordinary people, Japan's MUJI products are best-selling worldwide, the product style is simple, the quality is excellent and reliable, and it is difficult to find the difference between the two if you do not pay close attention to the purchase process, especially the decoration of the storefront and the appearance style are almost no different.
It is particularly easy to buy domestic MUJI products, and for ordinary consumers, buying brands and products that are not what they want is undoubtedly a bad experience or fraud.
For enterprises, the brand is based on good product quality, quality service experience, and should not focus on using legal loopholes, even if you win the lawsuit, you may not be able to win the hearts of consumers.
For the legislature and intellectual property protection, it is indeed necessary to strengthen the protection of intellectual property rights, strengthen cooperation with foreign intellectual property institutions, innovate the way of intellectual property protection, and legally protect the legitimate rights and interests of domestic and foreign enterprises and consumers! Legally reduce the possibility of li ghosts appearing.