Cultural Heritage as Legal Resistance: Traditional Expressions, Corporate Trademark Hegemony, and the Crisis of Social Trust in the Digital Economy
Frans Rian

Universitas IBBI

Abstract

The June 2026 ruling by the Suzhou Intermediate People^s Court, ordering Molly Tea to pay RMB 10.3 million to Louis Vuitton for infringing a four-petal floral trademark, has ignited urgent global debate. Compelling historical evidence shows nearly identical motifs on Tang Dynasty artifacts from 618 to 907 CE, centuries before Louis Vuitton^s inception. Despite this, the court upheld the foreign conglomerate^s rights under the ^first-to-file^ and ^well-known mark^ doctrines, which privilege commercial registration over cultural priority. This case is no anomaly- it is a stark harbinger of the legal vulnerabilities developing nations confront in the digital economy. This paper critically interrogates the structural asymmetry between individual corporate trademark rights and communal Traditional Cultural Expressions (TCEs). Employing a socio-legal and comparative methodology, it examines Indonesia^s legal framework, specifically Law No. 28 of 2014 on Copyright and Government Regulation No. 56 of 2022 on Communal Intellectual Property, against the backdrop of the Molly Tea verdict and international TRIPS obligations. The analysis reveals a significant governance deficit. While Indonesian positive law theoretically recognizes TCEs as state-held rights, the absence of implementing regulations renders these protections declarative and legally impotent against aggressive foreign trademark claims. Furthermore, the paper argues that the extraterritorial enforcement of the ^well-known mark^ doctrine, amplified by global digital branding and e-commerce, operates as a mechanism of legal neo-colonialism. This system prioritizes corporate capital over cultural social capital, erodes communal control over heritage, and deepens public distrust in domestic and international intellectual property governance, thereby undermining the inclusive resilience of knowledge-based communities.

Keywords: Traditional Cultural Expressions, Communal Intellectual Property, Well-Known Mark Doctrine, Digital Economy

Topic: Digital Power, Social Capital, and Inclusive Resilience: Interrogating Gender and Inequality in Technologically Mediated Societies (Digital Power- Social Capital- Inclusive Resilience)