Photo: Tiffany & Co. and Alffany logos shown side by side. Source: Global Times.
Jewelry and sanitary pads don’t have much in common. A Beijing courtroom is now deciding whether their names do.
Tiffany & Co. (蒂芙尼) sells diamonds. Alffany (艾芙尼) sells sanitary pads. Alffany’s name shares its last five letters with Tiffany, the two Chinese names share two of three characters, and the fonts look alike. That overlap is the heart of a trademark fight now playing out in China.
What’s actually happening
China’s trademark regulator ruled in 2025 that three Alffany trademarks should be cancelled after challenges from Tiffany. Two appeals are now before Beijing’s High People’s Court, and no compensation is being sought.
This is not an infringement lawsuit. A legal expert quoted by Global Times explained the difference: the Louis Vuitton case is about whether use of a trademark is infringement and whether damages are owed, while Tiffany vs. Alffany is about whether a specific trademark can be registered or stay valid. Even if a mark is invalidated, that doesn’t mean a court found Alffany liable for infringement.
The record so far is mixed
Tiffany has won some rounds. In 2017 it challenged one “ALFFANY” mark, which was ruled confusingly similar to its own marks and invalidated.
It has also lost one. In 2025 Tiffany opposed another Alffany mark, covering sleep eye masks, and the opposition failed. That decision found the goods differ enough from jewelry, and the Chinese names differ enough, to avoid confusion. It doesn’t settle the larger question.
Alfanny’s side
Alffany’s defense is common sense: nobody shopping for sanitary pads would mistake them for jewelry. The brand’s head says the name comes from the Chinese word for mugwort (艾草) and sounds like a phrase meaning “to care for you.” They deny trying to ride Tiffany’s fame, and say that if they lose, they would have to start a new brand from scratch. Alffany products were still on sale across several Chinese e-commerce platforms at last report.
Why it matters beyond one brand
The timing is awkward. Tiffany and Louis Vuitton both belong to LVMH, and the Tiffany case surfaced weeks after Louis Vuitton won a 10.3 million yuan (about $1.5 million) judgment against tea chain Molly Tea. Online, both disputes have been framed as a global luxury name defending its territory at the expense of domestic brands.
The Molly Tea case shows how the court of public opinion can differ from the court of law. Bloomberg reported that LV won in court but met a patriotic backlash, with one estimate putting its China sales down about 30% in July. LVMH says the broader decline is mostly macroeconomic, so the backlash is not the whole story.
Key takeaways for brand builders
1. Protecting your trademark is a legal necessity. Brands that don’t enforce can lose rights.
2. Enforcement has a reputational cost. Going after a small local brand can read as bullying, especially where consumers are already shifting toward homegrown names and value.
3. Cross-category fights are harder to defend, legally and publicly. The more distant the products, the weaker the confusion argument looks to ordinary consumers.
4. Naming is a long game. Alffany’s name is now at the center of a dispute that began with a 2017 filing.
The Beijing High People’s Court has yet to rule, so this is still an open case. Whatever the outcome, it’s a useful case study in where brand protection and brand perception diverge.
What do you think: is defending a trademark against a brand in a completely different category sensible, or a PR risk not worth taking?
SOURCES
– Dao Insights, “Tiffany vs. Alffany: LVMH’s next trademark dispute”: https://daoinsights.com/?p=52064
– Global Times, report on the Tiffany-Alffany dispute (July 2026): https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202607/1366241.shtml
– Yangtze Evening News / Zi Niu News, Tiffany’s 2017 and 2025 trademark challenges (17 July 2026, in Chinese): https://www.yzwb.net/news/yysp/202607/t20260717_373367.html
– World Journal, comments from Alffany’s brand head and the Molly Tea ruling (in Chinese): https://www.worldjournal.com/wj/story/121474/9638084
– Seoul Economic Daily, “Louis Vuitton Wins China Trademark Case but Loses Sales” (11 September 2026): https://en.sedaily.com/international/2026/09/11/louis-vuitton-wins-china-trademark-case-but-loses-sales
– Ad-hoc-news / boerse-global.de, “LVMH’s China Problem Has Two Faces” (14 October 2026): https://www.ad-hoc-news.de/boerse/news/unternehmensnachrichten/lvmh-s-china-problem-has-two-faces-a-trademark-fight-and-a-consumer-pullback/70324635