Chanel Loses Trademark Dispute With Huawei Over Latter's Logo

from the smells-like-a-loss dept

It's no secret that Chanel, the famous French luxury brand most notable for concocting things that make us smell better, is also a voracious protector of its trademarks. As evidence for this, one needs only to recall that the company once bullied a 2-person candy purveyor over its use of the number "5". The point is, when Chanel comes a-calling complaining about trademarks, you really need to view it all with narrow eyes.

Chanel's years-long trademark row with electronics company Huawei is no different. This story begins way back in 2017, when Huawei attempted to register a logo for its hardware division with EUIPO.

The dispute dated to 2017 when Huawei sought approval from the EU Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), a trademark body, to register its computer hardware trademark which has two vertical interlocking semi-circles.

Privately owned Chanel objected, saying that the design was similar to its registered French logo of two horizontal interlocking semi-circles used for its perfumes, cosmetics, costume jewellery, leather goods and clothing.

How similar are the logos? Well, the answer is very, very similar... if you mean that they are exact opposites.

The Chanel logos are on the bottom and the Huawei logo in question is up top. Yes, there's a circle enclosing both symbols. Yes both include interlocking shapes. But beyond that, the logos are essentially opposites. And, frankly, not the kind of opposite that calls to mind Chanel's logo at all. Add to all of that the fact that these two companies compete in wildly different markets and it's fairly crazy that Chanel thought it should kick off this dispute to begin with.

But it did. And then, in a 2019 decision by the trademark office, it lost. The trademark office indicated that the logos really weren't similar at all. For some reason Chanel appealed that decision and lost there too.

The French luxury house subsequently challenged the ruling at the Luxembourg-based General Court, which dismissed the appeal in its ruling on Wednesday.

"The figurative marks at issue are not similar. The marks must be compared as applied for and registered, without altering their orientation," the tribunal of judges said.

The tribunal said the visual differences in the two logos were significant.

"In particular, Chanel's marks have more rounded curves, thicker lines and a horizontal orientation, whereas the orientation of the Huawei mark is vertical. Consequently, the General Court concludes that the marks are different," it said.

It's a decision as right as Chanel's decision to start this fray was wrong. There is little if any chance of public confusion in this case, given the differences in the branding coupled with the divergent markets in which these companies operate.

The better question is why famous brands so often feel the need to gum up the works like this to begin with?

Filed Under: eu, luxury brands, trademark
Companies: chanel, huawei

Our FOIA Lawsuit Gets Results: ICE Admits It Didn't Really Seize A Million 'Copyright Infringing' Domains

from the the-case-is-over dept

Earlier this year, we sued ICE over its failure to provide relevant documents in response to a FOIA request we had made late last year. Late last week that lawsuit came to an end, after we agreed to dismiss it after ICE finally handed over the documents we had requested, which should have supplied last year. What we have now learned is that ICE didn't even bother to look in the proper place for the documents, and (not surprisingly) that once they handed over the documents, they reveal that ICE's legally-confused, bragging press release about all the domains it had seized... was not even remotely accurate. Perhaps that's why ICE didn't want to share the details with us or anyone else.

First, a bit of history. For years we've been calling out ICE for the very questionable practice of seizing websites for large companies in response to claims of possible copyright infringement. Indeed, First Amendment case law makes it pretty clear that law enforcement can't shut down an entire bookstore or an entire publication just because there is some possibly illegal content within that publication or store. Yet, ICE seemed over-eager to seize lots of websites and grandstand about it. In following up on those cases, we've shown that ICE made serious mistakes, often relying on claims from industry partners, such as the RIAA, without any actual evidence. This resulted in things like ICE quietly returning a hip hop blog it had seized and held for over a year (including engaging in secret proceedings before a judge that even the site's lawyer was blocked from learning about), admitting that it had no evidence for the seizure. In another case, it returned another hip hop blog five years after seizing it, without ever presenting any evidence for why it seized the site.

So we were confused and amazed last fall when ICE put out a ridiculous press release again hyping up its efforts to seize websites, claiming that over 1 million domains had been seized. The press release was written in a confusing and legally nonsensical manner, frequently confusing the difference between copyright and trademarks -- which is pretty shocking for a supposed law enforcement agency. For example, it talks about seizing "a copyright-infringing website offering counterfeit integrated sensors." Counterfeiting is a trademark issue, not a copyright one.

Because of this, we filed a FOIA request, seeking the list of the "over a million websites" the press release claimed were seized under Operation In Our Sites, and also requested the communications with the various "high-profile industry representatives" that the press release stated helped ICE with these seizures. ICE responded (late) that it couldn't find any such records, despite multiple requests and an appeal, leading us to sue. As we noted during our appeal, it "strains credulity to believe, and it is impossible to accept, that ICE doesn't have a single record related to the names of domains it had just seized."

After many months, ICE has finally explained why it failed to find any records, and provided what records it does have (with some mostly silly redactions). Let's start with the reason why it couldn't find any records. According the declaration of Toni Fuentes, in the ICE FOIA office, they didn't bother to look in the part of ICE that ran the program and issued the press release. ICE is broken up into various "offices" including "the IPR Center" which focuses on intellectual property issues. However, the ICE FOIA office decided that other parts of ICE were the places to look.

Upon receipt of a proper FOIA request, the ICE FOIA Office will identify which program offices, based on their experience and knowledge of ICE’s program offices, within ICE are reasonably likely to possess records responsive to that request, if any, and initiates searches within those program offices. Once the ICE FOIA Office determines the appropriate program offices for a given request, it provides the POCs within each of those program offices with a copy of the FOIA request and instructs them to conduct a search for responsive records. The POCs then review the FOIA request, along with any case-specific instructions that may have been provided, and based on their experience and knowledge of their program office practices and activities, forward the request and instructions to the individual employee(s) or component office(s) within the program office that they believe are reasonably likely to have responsive records, if any....

[....]

The ICE FOIA Office determined that because of the subject matter of Plaintiffs’ FOIA Request, HSI and OPA were the offices likely to have responsive records. The ICE FOIA Office instructed HSI and OPA to conduct a comprehensive search for records and to provide all records located during that search to the ICE FOIA Office for review and processing.

Notice that the IPR Center is not one of the offices searched, even though it was the office that issued the press release in question and is directly named in the press release. OPA makes at least a bit of sense, because it handles ICE's interactions with the media, so would likely have helped in reviewing the press release -- but would be unlikely to have the records we were requesting. HSI handles "investigations" for the Department of Homeland Security, and was mentioned in the press release as helping to take down a single website. After the FOIA office handed off the task to HSI, apparently a few special agents did somewhat random and haphazard searches of their own emails and turned up nothing.

Within C3, one Special Agent conducted a search of his computer and Outlook using the term “IPR” and “ICE IPR Center” based upon the press release provided by the Plaintiffs and his subject matter expertise. No records responsive to the request were located. One Special Agent conducted a search of his computer and Outlook using the terms “seized” and “website” based upon the press release provided by the Plaintiffs and his subject matter expertise. No records responsive to the request were located. One Special Agent conducted a search of Outlook using “Operation In Our Sites” based upon the press release provided by the Plaintiffs and his subject matter expertise. No records responsive to the request were located.

And here's the key part. That last agent suggested that maybe ICE should be asking the IPR Center to respond... but no one did anything about it:

However, this Special Agent did note on the returned search form that he believed the IPR Center may have responsive records. However, the IPR Center was not tasked to conduct a search at this administrative level and on February 19, 2019, the ICE FOIA Office notified the Plaintiffs that no responsive records were located.

Eventually, much, much later, someone finally gave the FOIA request to the "program manager" for Operation In Our Sites within the IPR Center, and that person found 75 pages, which were only given to us months after we sued (amusingly, the Fuentes declaration has some fun with the timelines, in suggesting that the IPR Center was told to do this search long before we sued, and then stops providing dates, such as the fact that they didn't give us these documents until months after we sued. The 75 pages, combined with the Fuentes declaration above, reveal that the ICE press release was a total joke and a complete exaggeration. First off, most of what happened had nothing at all to do with ICE. At best it was taking credit for seizures done by Europol, Interpol and various police agencies, as well as common every day takedown notice sent by various companies, which it appears ICE included in its numbers.

ICE further provided that of the websites that were criminally seized, the majority of them were seized by Europol, Interpol and police agencies from 26 different countries and that these partners did not share the domain names of those websites with ICE. Further, in regard to the remaining domain names, other industry partners were involved in the seizure of those websites and did not provide the domain names of those websites to the IPR Center. Lastly, ICE was not involved with and does not have any records relating to, any court filings relating to the seizure, civilly or criminally, of domain names.

Indeed, despite the press release clearly indicating that ICE was the one filing court cases -- including criminal cases -- to seize these domains, ICE admitted directly to us "ICE wasn't involved in the filing of any court documents."

So, what was included in those 75 pages? What appears to be nothing more than a PR campaign to allow ICE to puff up fake seizures of websites in advance of the press release it wanted to put out in association with Cyber Monday last year. The Program Manager of Operation In Our Sites apparently just emailed a bunch of big name retailers asking for stats:

Good afternoon,

I am sending this email as a reminder that Operation Cyber Monday 2018 will be concluding in a little over a month. I am hoping you can send me your statistic on the number of infringing websites and E-Commerce links that your company has civilly seized/taken down by COB November 16, 2018.

Lumping together "civilly seized/taken down" does a lot of heavy lifting in making this effort seem like a much bigger deal than it is. As the details we'll show below make pretty clear, by asking for "civilly seized" and "taken down" as a single number, ICE gets to pretend that sites were seized using civil seizure procedures (for which there would be legal paperwork), when they're mostly just taken down thanks to standard everyday takedown notices.

The various companies then responded, giving a wide range of results -- most of which appear to just be them getting various e-commerce sites (it appears to mainly be eBay/Alibabba/Amazon and some other market sites) and social media sites to remove links to what they claim are counterfeit products. Amusingly, in some of the emails, "Operation Cyber Monday" is redacted. In others, where it's the exact same email, it is not. Just last week, after we raised questions about a bunch of the redactions, ICE gave us a "supplemental" response, in which it changed some of the reasons for some of the redactions and removed all of the redactions on the phrase "Operation Cyber Monday 2018" which never should have been redacted in the first place.

What remains redacted is mainly who the companies are and which people at the companies are engaged in this effort to shut down websites and e-commerce links. Most rely on either (b)(6) or (b)(7)(c) redactions, both of which are for "unwarranted invasion of the personal privacy" while a few (b)(7)(d) redactions remain. Those are especially odd as that's for disclosing "the identify of a confidential source." It is difficult to see how these individuals should be considered confidential sources.

Also, for what it's worth, while the names of the companies that participated in this charade are technically redacted, with a little sleuthing, it is not that difficult to figure out who most of them are. In digging into the details, we've identified a variety of clothing/footwear/accessory companies, including Chanel, Abercrombie & Fitch, Victoria's Secret, Burberry, Under Armour, and Nike. It is unclear why ICE sought to keep those names secret, except that in the Fuentes declaration, it is admitted that these companies only agreed to participate in this propaganda campaign in exchange for anonymity and that they not be named as partners:

Each of the companies whose name and/or address has been withheld under Exemption 7(D) provided information to ICE to assist in a federal criminal law enforcement investigation under an expressed promise that ICE would not reveal to the public that they participated in this Operation. If released, foreseeable harm would result to both the companies that provided the information under the promise of confidentiality and to ICE, who relies upon the information these companies provide during the course of their law enforcement operations.

This seems highly questionable. We wouldn't go about releasing names of sources that would result in real harm, but it's difficult to see how revealing that Nike or Victoria's Secret have worked with ICE to take down Chinese links selling counterfeit merchandise does any harm to the continued efforts to find and take down counterfeit offerings. It seems the only "harm" would be some level of embarrassment to the companies for teaming up with ICE at a time when many consider ICE to be kind of toxic. But embarrassment to a brand over its associations is not a legitimate reason to withhold their names.

Even more to the point, from everything given to us, the claim that this somehow harms ICE's "law enforcement operations" is equally ridiculous, since ICE admitted that it didn't do any law enforcement operations here. It just asked everyone to tell them what they had gotten taken down so it could hype its own "participation."

As for the claim that over a million sites were seized -- that number seems to come almost entirely from one participant (the one company whose identity we couldn't backtrack, unfortunately), which claimed that it, alone, had been able to get 1,168,543 "unique host site URLs" offline. This company seemed particularly active in taking down sites, but no further details are given:

Indeed, this number is so out of sync with all of the other numbers, that it makes you wonder if the 1 million number is actually unique URLs or if they actually mean something else, like social media links or something. None of the others come anywhere near this number, and many are are just a few hundred or a few thousand links. Without this one unnamed company, there is no "1 million sites" that ICE can claim for itself (despite not doing anything). Also, it is clear that those sites were "taken down" and not "seized."

Nearly all of the other ones show very few websites taken offline, with most of the focus being on e-commerce sites listing counterfeits or social media posts showing the same. So, for example, this appears to be Chanel's list, which had the second most sites taken down at 13,657, though many more market and social media listings:

And here's Abercrombie & Fitch who "submitted" 726 websites.

What appears to be Victoria's Secret reported just 8 websites that it got "removed."

What appears to be Burberry took down just under 600 "infringing websites."

What we believe is Under Armour provided the most detail in their response in taking down 211 websites, though it sounds as though it was mostly just talking to Shopify, which helped them takedown websites offering counterfeit goods, rather than "seizing" the sites as the whole operation press release suggested:

And, finally, what is likely Nike took down just under 2,000 websites and a small number of Facebook and Instagram links but helpfully highlighted how many estimated "followers" it removed. But also the person from Nike "look[s] forward to continuing to work with you and figuring out ways to expand on our current partnership."

All in all, it seems like this is mostly these companies finding counterfeit sellers and getting those links taken down, mostly by going to intermediaries and asking for them to be shut down. That seems mostly reasonable, though there is always the risk of false accusations and legitimate sites and sellers being shut down. However, the key here is that ICE's boastful press release, in which it couldn't tell the difference between copyright and trademark, appeared to a bunch of nonsense, taking credit for the work that these companies had done in asking for various links to be removed -- and hyping it up as if these had been "seized" by the government.

All in all we're glad that ICE finally provided this information, though it shouldn't have required a lawsuit to make it happen. It does seem to show, as we expected, that ICE was exaggerating what was happening, and certainly exaggerating and playing up its own role in these "seizures" (most of which appeared to be takedown requests that ICE had nothing to do with). Special thanks to the team at Cause of Action, a non-profit focused on transparency and accountability in government, for representing us in this litigation.

In the meantime, since we're just weeks away from Cyber Monday 2019, we're curious to see if ICE makes another one of these announcements. At the very least, we hope this year they figure out the difference between copyright and trademark. Even better would be to just come out and admit that what they're exaggerating as some sort of legal/judicial process is really just a bunch of companies sending takedown notices that have nothing to do with ICE. Or, best case, maybe ICE gives it a rest this year. Somehow I doubt it will.

Filed Under: copyright, counterfeits, dhs, domain seizures, foia, ice, ipr center, trademark
Companies: abercrombie & fitch, burberry, chanel, nike, under armour, victoria's secret

Chanel Goes After 2 Person Chocolate Company Over The Number Five

from the six-seven-eight dept

Chanel is a company that does fashion and perfume. I know this because I can't walk into a department store without walking past a bunch of glass cases that smell like someone boiled six billion flowers in a pot and then threw it on me, leaving me only to walk past the purses and handbag sections and laugh at the prices for tiny, tiny little bags. Chanel does not sell chocolate, unless you count naming some of the afore-mentioned perfumes and handbags with vaguely chocolate-y names. I know this because I did a Google search to make sure, and those are infallible. And, yet, for some reason, Chanel has decided to play trademark-goalie on a two-person chocolate shop operating in Australia.

Global fashion house Chanel has forced a small Australian chocolate maker to change its branding after it claimed a trademark infringement on its No.5 perfume. A letter from Chanel's lawyers was the last thing that Chocolate @ No.5 owner Alison Peck expected when she set up her company. After all, her business is a "two-man show," named after its address – 5 Main Street Hahndorf, a village in the Adelaide Hills – and makes chocolate, not perfume or haute couture. Her company would have most likely gone unnoticed by the multinational fashion giant had it not applied for a trademark registration.

At which point Chanel's lawyers fired off a threat letter. A letter, I'll concede, perhaps not entirely without merit. Here is the original branding of Chocolate @ No. 5 alongside the branding of a Chanel bottle of perfume. As you can see, the style of the wording is somewhat similar. I still think I could argue something along the lines of, "What the hell are you people talking about, we do chocolate and the actual name of our business is all over our label", but there is enough of a similarity that claims of confusion don't come off as stupendously silly. Except that Peck has already agreed to change her branding to this: Problem solved, right? Wrong.

Chanel wanted Ms Peck to only use the digit or word 'five' while her business was located at it current address. "It was implied if I ever moved I would have to change the name. That was when I realised I was being bullied. They don't own the number five. In the future do we go to school and go 'one, two, three, four, trademark protected, six?' It's just crazy. Never mind that China is churning out [counterfeit] Chanel at a rate of knots. I was not trying to pass of my chocolates as being Chanel No.5. That's just silly because it's chocolate."

It sounds to me like the legal team at Chanel is sort of using the descriptive clauses in reverse, suggesting her logo is not infringing if it describes the company address, but if that address changes it suddenly becomes infringing because it's no longer descriptive. If that is indeed the argument they're making, it's a very silly one, because, again, chocolate. Add to that the idea that the number five is getting this much attention in the trademark realm and you can imagine the frustration of a small shop just trying to make a living.

And it's because of those same economic interests that Peck is backing down and simply re-branding.

"I was happy to withdraw my application and change my logo because there is nothing wrong with a bit of freshness to a product. Our product is still the same."

This appears to have placated Chanel, which Ms Peck said had backed down on its other demands. But the fashion titan is "monitoring" her business.

For Christ's sake, Chanel, have a chocolate and calm the hell down.

Filed Under: 5, australia, chocolate, likelihood of confusion, no. 5, number 5, perfume, trademark
Companies: chanel

Does Congress Even Realize That The Courts Appear To Think That SOPA Is Already In Force?

from the does-that-change-the-debate dept

Venkat Balasubramani and Eric Goldman (who are also posting occasionally on Techdirt these days) are doing an amazing job uncovering a series of lawsuits that suggest many courts are already issuing widespread and questionable injunctions against third party service providers when intellectual property holders come to them demanding vengeance. We've already covered the True Religion case and the Chanel case. It seems worth noting that both True Religion and Chanel have come out in favor of censoring the internet, having sent a letter cheering on both domain seizures by ICE and earlier versions of SOPA and PIPA. And it looks like they figured why wait for the law to change, when they could just convince courts to give them those remedies already.

The link above highlights yet another such case, this time involving Philip Morris. The pattern in all three cases is quite similar. Company claims website is offering infringing works and sues. Court -- without hearing from the site owners (and usually not making any effort to see if the sites are all owned by the same owner) -- issues massive injunctions against third party service providers to take down or otherwise block those sites. As Venkat summarizes, the Philip Morris restraining order includes:

• Defendants are enjoined from using any Philip Morris marks, in websites, domain name extensions, links to other websites, search engine databases.
• The domain name registrars are directed to transfer the domain name certificates to plaintiff (for deposit with the court).
• The registrars are directed to transfer the domain names to GoDaddy, who will "hold the registrations for the . . . domain names in trust . . . during the pendency of [the] action."
• GoDaddy shall also update the DNS data so it points to a copy of the complaint, summons, and court documents.
• Finally, Western Union is directed to "divert" transfers made by US consumers to three named individuals

All without hearing from the other side. Seem excessive? It sure does. Venkat notes how extraordinary these remedies are. Think about it for a second: based solely on the declaration of a Philip Morris employee, the court is ordering the full transfer not just of websites, but of any funds being sent to a website. That's insane and a clear violation of any reasonable due process.

At the same link, Eric Goldman notes that the sudden appearance of three of these cases suggests that there are probably many more in the system. And he points out that this information certainly seems like it should be relevant to those currently debating these bills in Congress. Do they even realize that the remedies they're describing are already being used by courts?

Separately, he notes the ridiculousness of such extreme punishment when only one side is heard:

From my perspective, the three cases demonstrate the problems with ex parte judicial oversight. Only hearing one side of the story isn't enough to trigger the kind of draconian remedies the courts are granting. In particular, in this case, interdicting money being sent via Western Union is quite troubling. Basically, the court says that money being sent by customers who may have done nothing wrong goes into a holding tank--the customers don't get their money back now (and maybe never?) even if the transaction didn't consummate. It seems like rejecting the money transfers, rather than interdicting the money, would have a lot fairer to the buyers caught in the middle. But they aren't in court to defend their interests, and no one else is speaking up on their behalf, so the rightsowner can make a pure cash grab from potentially innocent buyers. That kind of result wouldn't happen with real due process.

He wonders if there's a way to fix these kinds of abuses of process. In fact, I would suggest that the House Judiciary Committee (and the Senate) would be much better served dealing with the problem of such one-sided extreme court rulings, rather than encouraging more of that with SOPA and PIPA.

Filed Under: copyright, due process, injunctions, retraining order, seizure, sopa, trademark, websites
Companies: chanel, philip morris, true religion

Court Effectively Pretends SOPA Already Exists; Orders Domains Seized, De-Linked From Search

from the wow dept

As a whole bunch of folks have sent in a District Court judge in Nevada issued some rather stunning orders lately concerning websites that luxury brands company Chanel has argued "advertise, promote, offer for sale or sell" possibly counterfeit Chanel goods. The order is basically a more expansive private version of SOPA, in which the judge has let Chanel directly "seize" about 600 domains, as well as issued restraining orders and injunctions, including orders to Google, Bing, Yahoo, Facebook, Google+, and Twitter to "de-index and/or remove [the domain names] from any search results pages." Venkat Balasubramani covers the other wide-reaching aspects as well:

• an injunction against the defendants prohibiting them from using any Chanel marks or selling any Chanel products;
• an injunction against the top-level domain name registry, directing it to change the registrar of record for the domain names to GoDaddy (!);
• an injunction telling GoDaddy to change the DNS data for the domain names so the domain names resolve to a site where a copy of the case documents are hosted (servingnotice.com/sdv/index.html);
• authorization for Chanel to enter the domain names into "Google's Webmaster Tools" and cancel any redirection of the domain names;

Venkat also points out how crazy this whole thing is:

First, I did not get a clear sense that this is an enforcement action against a single defendant. If there's no credible allegation of a conspiracy or an arrangement between whomever is behind these domain names, it strikes me as problematic for Chanel to file a placeholder lawsuit and then add or remove defendants at its convenience.

Second, it was not entirely clear why the lawsuit was in Nevada. The domain names are not registered to a registrar that is based in Nevada, and there's no clear basis for in rem jurisdiction. It's possible that plaintiff picked this jurisdiction as a matter of convenience, but there's no apparent relationship between the alleged counterfeiting activities and the State of Nevada.

Then there's the matter that some of the court's relief is directed at a variety of entities that are not parties to the dispute (including the registrars, the registry, Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc.). I'm not sure how this court can direct a registry to change a domain name's registrar of record or Google to de-list a site, but the court does so anyway. This is probably the most problematic aspect of the court's orders. [Interesting that GoDaddy was chosen as the registrar that the domain names would be transferred to.]

Finally, there's no clear basis to authorize a transfer of a defendant's property pending resolution of a lawsuit to the plaintiff. (See Bosh v. Zavala.) I don't see this as particularly problematic in this case because Chanel is not looking to liquidate the domain names, but it certainly raises due process red flags, given that this is all done with minimal (or no) notice to defendants.

There are all sorts of issues with these rulings that appear to go way, way beyond what the law allows (even if SOPA were passed). And the fact that this includes sites that might only "promote" possibly counterfeit Chanel products? It sounds like many of the sites are entirely clear that they're offering replicas, meaning no likelihood of confusion being at issue. Furthermore, some of the order appears to also bar even the "promoting" of legitimate Chanel products. How is that reasonable?

Beyond that, the broad disappearing of these websites, ordering search engines and social networks to totally block their existence, despite the lack of an adversarial hearing, or any allowance for those search engines or social networks to have a say, seems immensely troubling. Why even bother with SOPA at all, when judges feel they can just order broad censorship based on one side's claims? These rulings are quite worrisome. One really surprising bit is that the judge, Kent Dawson, was one of the judges who smacked down Righthaven, so he at least understands how companies can abuse IP rights. It's surprising that he'd issue such a broad reaching order like this.

Furthermore, as Ars Technica points out, the judge doesn't even bother to look at the jurisdictional questions, and seems to order the global disappearance of sites outside the US, without any clear mandate to do so:

Missing from the ruling is any discussion of the Internet's global nature; the judge shows no awareness that the domains in question might not even be registered in this country, for instance, and his ban on search engine and social media indexing apparently extends to the entire world. (And, when applied to US-based companies like Twitter, apparently compels them to censor the links globally rather than only when accessed by people in the US.) Indeed, a cursory search through the list of offending domains turns up poshmoda.ws, a site registered in Germany. The German registrar has not yet complied with the US court order, though most other domain names on the list are .com or .net names and have been seized.

Who knows if anyone will even step up to appeal such broadly rulings (probably not), but they set a very scary precedent.

Filed Under: copyright, due process, injunctions, retraining order, seizure, sopa, trademark, websites
Companies: chanel

Gucci Accidentally Sues Chanel; Gets Restraining Order... Then Apologizes

from the sorry-about-that dept

The various luxury brand companies are pretty quick with trademark lawsuits these days -- often going well beyond reason. We've seen it time and time again -- especially when they sue third parties like Google or eBay. So I guess it shouldn't be too surprising that in their rush to sue, they don't always check all the facts... leading to hilarious scenarios like the one brought to our attention where Gucci accidentally sued Chanel and even got a temporary restraining order against the company.

The timeline, as far as I can tell, goes like this. Last year, Chanel and LVMH sued some websites that were selling counterfeit goods. One of those websites was called MyPurseWorld.com. In a ruling last June, a federal district court in Florida transferred that domain to Chanel, who began using the website to post the court ruling and to post info about other counterfeiting sites. Fair enough (well, I might argue that, but we'll leave it aside for now).

However, earlier this month, Gucci sued a bunch of sites for trademark infringement -- including MyPurseWorld.com. Apparently whoever put together the lawsuit hadn't checked out the site since last June, or discovered that Chanel now owned it and it was being used by that company to post anti-counterfeiting info. So, basically Gucci sued Chanel, claiming that its MyPurseWorld.com site was selling counterfeit Gucci products. They even had Chanel served as a defendant. On top of that, a district court in Manhattan granted a restraining order against "the website or its owner" barring web hosts or ISPs from working with them. Technically, yes, this could have meant that Chanel couldn't work with webhosts or ISPs. Of course, Chanel protested and Gucci quickly backed down, admitting "a minor bit of confusion."

I'm still a bit confused why the judge would totally bar a site from working with a webhost or ISP, but we'll leave that discussion for another day.

Filed Under: lawsuits
Companies: chanel, gucci