Pop Mart wins Labubu lawsuit against tea chain Nayuki, court says

Pop Mart’s win over Nayuki does more than settle one tea-chain promotion gone wrong. The Beijing Chaoyang District People’s Court found Shenzhen Pindao Catering Management Co., the company behind Nayuki, liable for unfair competition tied to unauthorized Labubu use and ordered it to pay 300,000 yuan in economic losses plus 20,000 yuan for rights protection costs. Neither side appealed, so the judgment took effect, and the message to the market is hard to miss: Labubu is no longer a toy name brands can borrow for free traffic.

The dispute centered on a September 2025 campaign that ran across Nayuki stores, its official WeChat account, and its mini-program. The promotion used a Mibubu-themed drink push and paired it with slogan language linking the beverage to Labubu prizes. Nayuki’s defense appears to have leaned on a small disclaimer buried at the bottom of the marketing materials saying the prizes were self-procured and there was no official collaboration, but the court rejected that line. For collectors, that matters because it draws a sharper line between licensed Labubu products and anything that merely borrows the character’s heat.

Pop Mart has good reason to defend that line aggressively. Its 2025 annual results said The Monsters series generated 14.16 billion yuan in revenue, up 365.7% year on year, and became the company’s first IP franchise to top 10 billion yuan in annual revenue. That surge has turned Labubu into more than a collectible. It is now a core corporate asset, one that investors already worry Pop Mart leans on too heavily. The company has also been pushing enforcement on other fronts, including a March 2026 settlement with Bambu Lab over unauthorized Labubu 3D-printable files, while counterfeit Labubu toys have been seized by customs and police in multiple countries.

Nayuki’s own numbers explain why the company may have been tempted to ride the Labubu wave. Its 2025 results showed revenue of about 4.331 billion yuan and a net loss of about 241 million yuan, after store closures and restructuring pressure. That kind of squeeze is exactly where unauthorized brand borrowing tends to show up: on drinks, packaging, mini-programs, and social posts that try to capture fandom without paying for the rights. This ruling tells grey-market sellers and copycat promoters the same thing Pop Mart has been saying all year: if Labubu is driving the traffic, legitimacy is part of the product now.