MUJI in China: Separate the Marks, Goods and Proceedings

Case at a glance

Subject

Selected 无印良品 / 無印良品 disputes

Japanese side

Ryohin Keikaku Co., Ltd. and its Shanghai MUJI company

Other parties

Beijing Miantian Textile Co., Ltd.; Beijing Wuyinliangpin in the reported 2019 cases

Civil proceedings

Beijing High People’s Court: infringement; Beijing IP Court: disparagement appeal

2025 coverage

Nandu-reported administrative retrial application; original ruling unavailable

The specific rights

Keep MUJI, 無印良品 and 无印良品 as distinct written signs in the research file. The 2025 report identifies No. 1561046 in Class 24. This is a historical reported reference, not a verified current record or a conclusion covering every item in that class. [MUJI-NANDU]

Historical references only. No current registration snapshot is included; no present-day status or complete portfolio is asserted.

Selected timeline

1. 2019-11Infringement

   Two judgments described in the later official report found infringement. [MUJI-BJ]

2. 2021-11Disparagement / first instance

   A separate claim concerned public statements following the infringement litigation. [MUJI-BJ]

3. 2022Disparagement / appeal

   The report records RMB 100,000 economic loss plus RMB 100,000 reasonable expenses. Exact judgment day is not established here. [MUJI-BJ]

4. 2025-06-23Reported administrative ruling

   Nandu reports rejection of a retrial application in (2024)最高法行申7358号. Original ruling not obtained. [MUJI-NANDU]

Dates belong to the events shown. Source publication and access dates appear separately below.

What the sources actually establish

The Beijing portal account describes the civil matters separately. Its displayed publication date is 28 September 2022, despite a November URL. Nandu’s 24 July 2025 article reports a different administrative matter; neither the full ruling nor its reasoning has been independently read for this draft. [MUJI-BJ] [MUJI-NANDU]

Keep three files, not one running score

A useful case note begins with the question the decision-maker was asked to answer. For an infringement dispute, identify the challenged conduct and relevant right. For a dispute about public communications, keep the statements and their audience in view. For an administrative registration challenge, identify the specific record and the decision under review. Do not carry the result from one folder into another merely because the same brand appears on the cover.

Give each file its own parties, procedural stage, decision date and source. A later report can help locate an earlier proceeding, but it does not replace the earlier document. If the original cannot be obtained, label the entry as reported and limit what it says. This approach also prevents a news article’s publication date from becoming an invented judgment date.

Build a product map before making a portfolio claim

Use the actual product range as the starting point for a scope discussion. List the goods the business plans to sell and how the proposed sign will appear on them. A broad label such as “home products” can hide several different questions. Keep proposed wording, relevant class information and specific covered goods together, then ask a professional to assess the connection rather than treating a class number as the complete answer.

Preserve the sign as shown in the evidence. Simplified characters, traditional characters, Latin letters and a combined presentation should not be silently merged in a working spreadsheet. A team may use one informal brand name for convenience, but the research file should still identify which version a document concerns. That discipline is useful even when the eventual professional assessment finds a relationship between the versions.

Treat communications as a separate approval task

A dispute can produce pressure to publish a short and forceful explanation. Before doing so, distinguish the business’s position from what a decision actually establishes. Words such as “squatter”, “counterfeit” or “fake” can make a statement sound decisive while concealing unresolved questions about products, evidence or procedure. A neutral account can still explain that a dispute exists, which document it concerns and what remains open.

Prepare the public explanation from the underlying case note. Ask the person reviewing it to check each factual sentence against a source and each attributed statement against its speaker. Keep marketing shorthand out of the evidence column. The recommendation is a communications workflow, not a finding about any present-day retailer, product or registration mentioned in coverage of MUJI.

How to read the reported 2025 development

The 2025 entry is deliberately labelled as reporting. It identifies a document worth obtaining, but this draft cannot reproduce reasoning from a ruling it has not read. Statements by companies or their representatives remain attributed positions. They are not additional court holdings and should not be used to build a wider conclusion about every category of goods.

When updating an internal brief, keep a space for the original decision, its operative wording and any limits on its scope. A phrase such as “retrial application rejected” should not become “a new trial examined every allegation”. Equally, a historical report about a registration should not become a current database-status badge. These distinctions make a later update easier to verify without rewriting the whole story.

What this case does not prove

• These selected proceedings do not establish that one business owns every MUJI-related sign or that an entire class was “taken”.
• The reported 2025 development does not supply the missing original ruling, its full reasoning or today’s registration status.
• Company responses and media descriptions are not findings that every competing product is counterfeit or lawful.

What your business should check

Related guides and next action

• Understand classes and similar groups
• Plan Chinese name versions
• Understand options for an existing conflict

New-filing guidance concerns your own proposed mark. Existing disputes and transfers need a separate scope and engagement; no outcome, price or deadline extension is promised by this article. Contract work has its own scope and is not included in the filing Free Check.