The theme is also present on the @FinancialTimes. The well-known British luxury shoe company Manolo Blahnik won a long legal battle that began in China in 2000 against Chinese entrepreneur Fang Yuzhou, who had registered the brand name to sell his own line of shoes. For this reason, in China you could legally buy Manolo Blahnik branded shoes, but they were not original products: these were only found by third-party retailers.
Now, with the victory of the lawsuit, the company Manolo Blahnik will not only be able to start selling the shoes it produces in China, but will also be able to legally fight the manufacturers and retailers of counterfeit shoes.
Kristina Blahnik, the company's CEO and granddaughter of the founder who gave it its name, commented that it was a "huge void in our existence." The company said the goal is now to massively expand into the Chinese market, which is currently considered the fastest growing in the luxury fashion industry.
The Manolo Blahnik brand had already existed since the seventies, but had become famous in the late nineties thanks to the big advertising that came from the TV series Sex and the City, whose protagonist Carrie Bradshaw collected its shoes. In 1999 the Chinese entrepreneur Fang Yuzhou had registered it and had in fact become the owner in China: seizing the potential of the visibility he was having, he decided to use it for his own line of shoes.
Unlike other countries, where to register a trademark you must prove that you have used it previously or otherwise have valid reasons to do so, in China the law protects the first person who registers it, regardless of who they are. This law has long allowed the trade of brands that were bought and then resold at increased prices to international companies as they attempted to expand into the Chinese market. Another brand that, like Manolo Blahnik, has been in dispute for twenty years for similar reasons is the Japanese Muji.
In 2019, China's intellectual property laws have changed a bit and become stricter on those who act "in bad faith" in this area, allowing several companies to win lawsuits in which they claimed ownership of rights to their trademarks. Before Manolo Blahnik, the sports shoe brand New Balance, former basketball player Michael Jordan and the Italian group Zegna had also won similar lawsuits.
