What is the coffee basis for the Manner latte art penalty?

The Zhongjiang Road store of Shanghai Yinhe Industrial Co., Ltd., an affiliate of Manner Coffee, was fined 1,000 yuan by the Shanghai Putuo District Market Supervision Administration and ordered to stop the infringement. On February 10, 2022, the store made and sold coffee with latte art resembling Bing Dwen Dwen, the Beijing Winter Olympics mascot, without authorization: two cups, with illegal revenue of 45 yuan.

Tianyancha public records show the penalty was issued for using Olympic symbols on goods, packaging containers, or transaction documents. The case drew attention because Bing Dwen Dwen was in extreme demand during the Games, and unauthorized commercial use of the symbol carries administrative consequences. For cafe owners, the practical line runs between personal creative latte art and selling drinks that reproduce a protected Olympic mark.

During the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, Bing Dwen Dwen became a mascot pursued by everyone, and the craze of "one Dwen Dwen hard to get" spawned various homemade and commercial imitation behaviors. A Manner coffee shop in Shanghai was fined 1,000 yuan by market regulators for making latte art coffee resembling Bing Dwen Dwen, drawing industry attention to the boundaries of commercial use of Olympic symbols. This article sorts out the penalty details of the incident, the legal basis, and typical cases from the same period, to help coffee practitioners clarify the line between creative latte art and infringement, and avoid inadvertently crossing intellectual property red lines.

Fellow cafe owners who do latte art need to be careful: a casual creative pattern may invite administrative penalties, or even cost you a whole month's income.

Tianyancha public information shows that the Zhongjiang Road store of Shanghai Yinhe Industrial Co., Ltd., an affiliated enterprise of Manner Coffee, was given an administrative penalty of 1,000 yuan by the Shanghai Putuo District Market Supervision Administration for using Olympic symbols on goods, packaging containers, or transaction documents, and was ordered to immediately stop the infringement.

The penalty details state that on February 10, 2022, the store, without authorization, made and sold coffee with latte art resembling "Bing Dwen Dwen," totaling 2 cups, with illegal business revenue of 45 yuan.

"Bing Dwen Dwen" is one of the mascots of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. During the Winter Olympics, some people queued 12 hours in advance just to buy it, while others were willing to pay extra to scalpers to get one.

Bing Dwen Dwen quickly became a scarce item, and to make up for the regret of not being able to get one, netizens took matters into their own hands: crocheting with needle and thread, shaping with clay, making cakes in its likeness, and even drawing it on the surface of coffee...

It could be said that at that stage everything could be Bing Dwen Dwen; as long as it bore the image of Bing Dwen Dwen, it could attract a great deal of attention. Some merchants smelled a business opportunity and used the Bing Dwen Dwen symbol for commercial purposes without permission. Since the figurines were hard to get, they launched Bing Dwen Dwen latte art coffee in their stores and started a "wild Bing Dwen Dwen" business.

At the time, a Manner coffee shop in Shanghai made it onto Weibo's trending topics for making Bing Dwen Dwen latte art coffee, and related reports can still be found today. According to media reports at the time, the Shanghai Putuo District Market Supervision Administration investigated and determined that the latte art resembling the "Bing Dwen Dwen" symbol was indeed made by store employees when selling coffee, and the store had not obtained permission from the owner of the Olympic symbol rights.

On the Xiaohongshu platform, many Bing Dwen Dwen lattes launched by cafes during the Winter Olympics can still be found today.

As an Olympic mascot, Bing Dwen Dwen belongs to the category of Olympic symbols and is protected by laws and regulations such as the Trademark Law of the People's Republic of China and the Regulations on the Protection of Olympic Symbols. Even if the coffee shop did not charge extra for the Bing Dwen Dwen latte, using its image already constituted an illegal act of infringing the intellectual property rights of Olympic symbols.

Making a "wild" Bing Dwen Dwen yourself is not infringement, but it absolutely must not involve commercial activity; that is, there must be no profit-making use of any kind, including commercial promotion. If you are just making latte art for your own enjoyment, or simply taking photos and sharing them without commercial promotion, it will not constitute infringement under copyright law.

According to the Regulations on the Protection of Olympic Symbols, the term of protection for Olympic symbols is 10 years. The 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympics symbols enjoy patent protection from the date of announcement (February 13, 2022), with a term of 10 years.

In the first half of 2022, many places had already investigated and punished infringements involving the commercial use of the Bing Dwen Dwen symbol. For example, the Nanjing Gulou District Market Supervision Administration uncovered a case of unauthorized production and sale of "Bing Dwen Dwen" cakes during an enforcement inspection; an enterprise in Nantong City sold short-sleeved shirts printed with Bing Dwen Dwen patterns on its Tmall store, suspected of infringing the intellectual property rights of Olympic symbols, and so on.

Nearly half a year after the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics ended, although the popularity of Bing Dwen Dwen had faded and "one Dwen Dwen hard to get" was no longer the case, making a "wild" Bing Dwen Dwen without authorization and constituting a commercial act is still infringement and may entail corresponding legal liability.

Image source: Internet

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The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.