Capitalizing on Mixue Bingcheng's Popularity?! A Milk Tea Brand Ordered to Pay 500,000 in Compensation

Where there's popularity, there's a market — and where there's a market, there's money. The new-style tea beverage industry has attracted mainstream attention in recent years, and with it, a wave of deliberate trademark infringement. Popular brands routinely find themselves targeted by copycats, and names as big as Heytea, Lu Xi Alley, and Cha Yan Yue Se have all been imitated. These knockoffs don't just siphon off customers; they also make consumers doubt the products themselves and erode a brand's credibility.

Trademark Infringement in the Beverage Industry: A Costly Lesson

The latest case involves a milk tea shop called Mixue Yue, which rode on the name of the tea giant Mixue Ice Cream & Tea. Because its name and logo bore a striking resemblance to the Mixue Ice Cream & Tea trademark family, Mixue Ice Cream & Tea sued the shop's parent company, Mixue Yue (Guangzhou) Technology Co., Ltd., for trademark infringement. The final judgment has now been handed down: Mixue Yue was ordered to pay 512,184 yuan in compensation to Mixue Ice Cream & Tea.

Unhappy with the first-instance ruling, Mixue Yue appealed. The court, however, found that Mixue Yue's name and logo were indeed highly similar to Mixue Ice Cream & Tea's series of trademarks, with a clear intent to cash in on the brand's popularity — a serious infringement of Mixue Ice Cream & Tea's trademark rights. The appeal was rejected, and the original judgment stood: Mixue Yue Company and its legal representative, surnamed Liang, were jointly liable to compensate the trademark holder for economic losses.

Public records show that Mixue Ice Cream & Tea was founded in Zhengzhou in 1997 as an ice cream and tea beverage brand. After more than two decades of growth, it now operates 22,276 stores worldwide, spanning 31 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions in China as well as overseas markets such as Vietnam and Indonesia.

On September 22, 2022, the China Securities Regulatory Commission's website showed that Mixue Ice Cream & Tea Co., Ltd.'s A-share listing application had been accepted and formally pre-disclosed in its prospectus, with a plan to list on the main board of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange and GF Securities as lead underwriter.

As for Mixue Yue (Guangzhou) Technology Co., Ltd.: according to corporate data from Qichacha, it was established in September 2019 in Baiyun District, Guangzhou, with registered capital of 200,000 yuan. Its business scope covered natural science research and experimental development, educational consulting (excluding licensed training activities), business training, and food sales (pre-packaged food). Its current status is already cancelled.

Although many "Mixue Yue" beverage stores exist in the market, no commercial franchise filing for Mixue Yue Company could be found on the Ministry of Commerce's unified business system platform.

Strategic Trademark Protection

Tianyancha records show that Mixue Ice Cream & Tea Co., Ltd. holds 2,161 trademark filings, of which 1,517 have been successfully registered. Core trademarks such as "Mixue Ice Cream & Tea," "Snow King and Image," "Mi Le Xue," and "Mi Xue" are all registered across every category. Why register so many seemingly unrelated categories? It is evidence of how seriously the company takes trademark protection.

This is the defensive trademark strategy: the same owner registers a famous trademark across different classes of goods to prevent others from exploiting it and causing harm. Defensive registrations aren't necessarily used, so they aren't always easy to approve — but once granted, they are exempt from the requirement that a trademark must be actively used to be maintained.

Conclusion

As market competition intensifies, opportunists will always look to skirt the law by hitching their wagon to someone else's registered trademark. Defensive trademark registration is a sharp weapon against such free-riding — and beyond protecting the brand, it also reserves room for the company's own future expansion.

Those who deliberately latch onto famous trademarks and confuse consumers will eventually face legal consequences. For large companies, defensive registration remains the first line of defense.

Image source: Internet

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Brand reputation is earned one cup at a time — which is why FrontStreet Coffee sources and roasts its own single-origin beans rather than cutting corners. If you are just getting into specialty coffee, start with the FrontStreet natural-process Huakui from Ethiopia's Sidamo region, with berry, floral, jackfruit, melon, and honey notes, or the FrontStreet Washed Guodingding Cooperative, a Yirgacheffe lot perfumed with jasmine, lemon acidity, and berries.

For a dependable daily cup, the FrontStreet Cerrado Red Bourbon from Brazil offers cream, peanut, and cocoa flavors at a friendly price, while the higher-grown yellow bourbon from FrontStreet Queen Estate layers cane sugar sweetness over macadamia and almond aromas. Coffee drinkers who shy away from acidity should try the wet-hulled FrontStreet Lindong Mandheling — richer and smoother, with herbal and spice notes — or the triple-hand-selected FrontStreet PWN Golden Mandheling, prized for its clean body and distinct wood and caramel character.