In July 2026, the first-instance verdict in Louis Vuitton's trademark-infringement suit against Moli Naibai (a Chinese milk-tea brand) ordered damages of 10.3 million yuan. In this episode of Yi Yu Dao Po, Shen Yi put forward an analytical concept to explain this kind of phenomenon: the aggressive IP enforcer (活跃知识产权维权者). This is not a term of law but a tool of observation — it describes those large enterprises that hold scaled rights portfolios, maintain long-term market surveillance, and advance multiple lawsuits in parallel.
LV is the most typical example in the world. Its enforcement history runs from 1854 to the present, with a footprint spanning the United States, the European Union, South Korea, Singapore, Russia, India, and China. Sorting through these cases reveals a pattern — courts in each country draw a line between protecting the goodwill of famous brands and defending the public cultural domain. The position of the line differs, but the direction is the same: trademark rights must not expand without limit. Drawing on these precedents, Shen Yi lays out a twelve-point response framework, from database construction to international rule negotiation, in an attempt to answer a single question: as the enforcer's litigation network spreads ever wider, how do institutions keep up?
LV is not a luxury brand; it is one of the most active players in the global intellectual-property protection system. From the striped canvas of 1854 to the cross-industry disputes of 2026, the scope of its enforcement has expanded outward at every turn. Only by understanding the concept of the "aggressive enforcer" can one distinguish, in a conflict like LV v. Moli Naibai, between legitimate enforcement, overreaching enclosure, and the rightful use of a cultural inheritor.
A Concept: The Aggressive Enforcer
To understand the LV case, one must first understand a concept: the aggressive IP enforcer. Shen Yi emphasizes in particular that the Chinese "活跃" (huoyue) here corresponds not to "active" but to "aggressive" — the word carries no derogatory charge; it describes a category of corporate behavior: holding a scaled intellectual-property portfolio, conducting long-term global market surveillance, and frequently deploying every available means to defend and extend the boundaries of one's rights. Such enterprises are not merely filing lawsuits; they are using litigation, opposition, complaint, customs seizure, and platform takedown as tools to shape market rules in their own favor, round after round.
Whether an enterprise qualifies as an aggressive enforcer can be judged by six criteria:
- The rights portfolio is large enough. Not just one or two trademarks, but an entire net — word marks, figurative marks, three-dimensional marks, design patents, copyrights, trade dress — covering different countries and product categories. From letter monograms to floral patterns to the checkboard, LV has built a defensive registration system.
- Market surveillance never stops. Offline investigation, image-scanning of e-commerce platforms, customs recordation, image-recognition systems — professional teams keep their eyes on the global market year-round.
- Enforcement channels are not a single road. The same dispute can proceed simultaneously through administrative enforcement, civil litigation, trademark invalidation, platform complaint, and customs seizure, layering multiple procedures on top of one another.
- The scope of protection keeps expanding. Enforcement has gradually extended from completely identical counterfeit marks to similar patterns, cross-category goods, decorative use, advertising expression, and artistic creation.
- Litigation is strategic. Some cases care less about the size of the damages than about establishing a judicial precedent, driving up competitors' compliance costs, and strengthening the association between the brand and a particular visual element. Litigation itself is a form of deterrence.
- The resource advantage is pronounced. The legal teams, historical archives, consumer-survey capabilities, and cross-border evidence-gathering networks that a large multinational commands are things no small or medium-sized enterprise, and no intangible-cultural-heritage inheritor, can match. The asymmetry runs so deep that the question is not who is in the right, but who has the resources to sustain a war of attrition long enough.
Read through these six criteria and you will find that LV plants its feet firmly on almost every one. It is not merely a luxury brand; it is one of the most active players in the global intellectual-property protection system. Understand that, and the angle from which you view its enforcement behavior changes.
A Hundred and Seventy Years of Enforcement Territory
LV's enforcement did not begin recently. It has fought this battle from the very first day the brand was founded. The means and the scale have changed, but the core logic has never wavered — protect the pattern and the mark, and do not let anyone else look like you. Shen Yi divides this history into six stages.
Stage One: 1854–1896 — Fending Off Copycats Through Product Differentiation
The nineteenth-century explosion of rail and ocean travel swelled the market for travel trunks, and their appearance was quickly copied by rivals. LV first switched to gray canvas, then to striped canvas, and in 1888 introduced the checkboard canvas, going so far as to weave the French words "Louis Vuitton" into the pattern. The thinking of this stage was simple — if you copy me, I switch to something you cannot read.
Stage Two: 1896 to the 1970s — Symbol Becomes Institution
In 1896, Georges Vuitton designed the monogram pattern — LV letters, floral motifs, and geometric elements woven together. This design turned the pattern from a product ornament into a brand symbol. The enterprise began to accumulate goodwill through continuous use, quality control, and market communication, and the object of protection expanded from the word name to the entire visual system.
Stage Three: 1970 to the 1990s — Global Expansion and Well-Known-Mark Protection
In 1987, LV merged with Moët Hennessy to form LVMH, concentrating the resources of capital, marketing, advertising, and legal protection. The counterfeiting industry also exploded alongside the globalization of luxury goods. LV began to make comprehensive use of national trademark systems, customs protection, and judicial litigation to defend the brand, and the status of a well-known mark let it stop free-riding even on dissimilar product categories.
Stage Four: 2000–2015 — The Intensification of Litigation
Internet e-commerce made the sales channels for counterfeit goods ever more dispersed, and LV began to confront online platforms, advertising, cultural products, and parody works. But it was also during this stage that it suffered landmark defeats in several countries — U.S. courts said "no" to the expansion of trademark rights in a number of key cases.
Stage Five: 2015–2020 — The EU's Test of Distinctiveness
Can the checkboard pattern serve as a trademark? The European courts held that an ordinary checkboard is a common decorative pattern lacking inherent distinctiveness. LV argued that it had acquired recognition through use, but the courts replied — you must prove it, and you must prove it across the entire EU. High renown in a few Western European countries cannot substitute for evidence of consumer perception in the Central and Eastern European member states.
Stage Six: 2021 to the Present — Cross-Industry Disputes and the Rise of the Cultural-Pattern Question
The targets of enforcement have expanded from handbags and apparel to catering, tea drinks, liquor, casinos, and daily necessities. The alteration and recycling of old bags has become a new battlefield — when a consumer takes apart a genuine bag and remakes it into something else, is that infringement? Courts in different countries answer differently. The question of traditional patterns and public cultural resources has also grown ever more prominent — which is precisely the context in which the Moli Naibai case sits.
Where the Courts of the World Have Drawn the Line
LV has won many lawsuits around the world, but the ones it lost are, if anything, more instructive. For they clarify the boundary for everyone else — where exactly the endpoint of trademark rights lies.
The Chewy Vuiton pet-toy case (2007) — the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against LV. The court said a successful parody must do two things: first, make you think of the original; second, simultaneously let you know this is not the original. The price, material, purpose, name, and sales channel of this dog chew toy were too far removed from a luxury good for any consumer to be confused.
The My Other Bag tote case — an American company made low-priced tote bags printed with "My Other Bag…" and cartoons of luxury brands. The court again ruled against LV. "My other bag is a luxury one" is itself a well-worn humorous structure, and consumers were unlikely to be misled.
The Hangover Part II film case — a character mistook a travel bag for an LV. The court dismissed the claim on the ground that once a trademark enters the social culture it can serve as narrative material, and the rights-holder cannot control every mention and depiction.
In 2015 and 2022, the EU General Court handled the LV checkboard trademark dispute twice. Its position has been stable: the checkboard is a basic geometric decorative structure, common across many cultures. Commercial success can help an ordinary pattern acquire trademark status, but it cannot dispense with the burden of proving consumer perception in each locality.
In 2026, the Supreme Court of Korea ruled on an old-bag alteration case. The court held that when a consumer hands a genuine bag to an alteration service to be resized for personal use, that does not necessarily constitute "use" in the trademark-law sense. Singapore, by contrast, found it infringing for an alteration service to make new goods from old LV bag material and sell them openly. The distinction: altered for one's own use versus altered for market sale. Closed personal use has legitimate room; large-scale commercialization does not.
Louis Vuitton demanded that a Portuguese liqueur brand stop using the abbreviation "LV." The Portuguese court dismissed the claim: the letters L and V are a public linguistic resource. LV may protect the particular font and arrangement it registered, but it cannot obtain absolute control over the combination of the two letters "LV."
In Russia and India, the scope of protection is still expanding. In Russia, LV won a case over the similarity of a juice advertisement's pattern, and the Delhi High Court of India confirmed its well-known-mark status. But the object of protection still remains at the level of "blatant counterfeiting."
Taken together, global case law draws a relatively clear line: on the left is where LV wins — verbatim copying, counterfeiting, misleading consumers; on the right is where LV cannot win — parody, artistic expression, personal alteration, basic public elements. Where this line is drawn differs from country to country, but the direction is the same — trademark rights do not expand infinitely with the scale of capital.
Twelve Paths of Response
With a conceptual tool in hand and the world's precedents assembled, the final question is: what should China do in this situation? Shen Yi offers twelve recommendations in his analysis. They are not a government white paper; they are more like a toolbox checklist — each item can be used on its own, and together they point to a single goal: letting institutional judgment catch up with the speed of the enforcer's expansion.
Collect the patterns found in cultural relics, intangible heritage, ancient texts, architecture, textiles, ceramics, and ethnic costume, and annotate them clearly — name, era, region, and whether they have entered the public domain. Four-petal flowers, lotus blossoms, baoxiang flowers, key-fret patterns, cloud-and-thunder patterns, checkboards — build a dedicated archive for each type. The function of the database is not to "fence them off and forbid use," but to give trademark examination and court rulings a verifiable reference.
Where a mark seeking registration makes heavy use of public-domain traditional patterns, the examiner may require the applicant to explain which specific combination is being protected and what its distinctive portion is. For applications involving important cultural heritage, experts in cultural relics, ethnic studies, and intellectual property may be invited to deliberate together.
The overall design of a trademark may be protected, but the basic elements that compose it — petals, lozenges, hearts — should not enjoy exclusive rights on their own. Through examination opinions, disclaimers of exclusive right, or judicial interpretation, the registered mark can be "taken apart": the whole is protected, while the public elements are returned to the public domain.
Faithful reproduction of relic patterns, traditional-craft education, museum reproductions, cultural research, and non-commercial display should be preserved as fair use. Commercial creation, so long as it can clearly state its provenance — proving the pattern comes from traditional sources or an independent design process — should not be over-restricted merely because it "shares a public element" with some trademark.
Drawing on the Korean case: a genuine product bought by a consumer, repaired when broken, or resized for personal use — that is legitimate room. But buying old goods in bulk, remaking them into new products, and putting them on the market requires disclosing the provenance of the alteration; one must not lead people to believe it is brand-authorized.
Improve the system for disclosing the basis of rights, and support defendants in recovering reasonable enforcement expenditures against conduct such as repeat suits, concealment of information, and the use of platform complaints to crowd out competitors. Shifting litigation costs, injunctive preservation, and disclosure of related cases — all these tools can be used to reduce the risk of "litigation being wielded as a weapon."
Outright counterfeiting and bad-faith free-riding may warrant substantial damages. But in cases where the boundary of a cultural pattern is itself contested and the defendant can prove an independent source and promptly cease use, proportionate remedies should take priority.
Obvious counterfeits can be taken down swiftly. Complex disputes involving similar patterns and traditional elements should be escalated to higher-level review. The party being complained about should have the opportunity to submit evidence of historical patterns, and credit-based constraints should be established against accounts that file repeated bad-faith complaints.
Provide small and micro enterprises, designers, and intangible-cultural-heritage inheritors with trademark-search guidance, low-cost legal consultation, and intellectual-property insurance. Encourage the preservation of creative drafts and provenance records.
When a multinational enterprise applies for a trademark involving traditional elements, it may proactively disclose the cultural context. Large brands can periodically issue IP-enforcement transparency reports, explaining how many complaints were filed, why, and how many were withdrawn.
WIPO's negotiations on traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions have continued for years. China can push for the establishment of an "international defensive database of traditional cultural expressions," so that trademark-examination authorities first check the cultural provenance of a pattern before approving the relevant mark.
For traditional crafts, cultural symbols, and cultural-creative brands with international market potential, register overseas trademarks and copyrights in advance. Establish an early-warning mechanism against overseas trademark squatting. At the same time, remind Chinese enterprises that when they go abroad, they too must respect the cultural-traditional resources of other peoples.
Taken together, the twelve items do not answer the question "is LV right or wrong" — that is left to the courts. They answer a different question: as conflicts like LV v. Moli Naibai multiply, can China possess a set of tools for distinguishing — between legitimate enforcement, overreaching enclosure, and the rightful use of a cultural inheritor.