Chanel sues group based in ‘lax’ jurisdictions

16-10-2017

French fashion company Chanel has filed a complaint against 20 defendants who “operate in foreign jurisdictions with lax trademark systems” for allegedly selling counterfeit goods online.

Filed at the US District Court for the Southern District of California, Chanel’s suit accused the defendants of setting up a string of stores online “operating in parallel to the legitimate marketplace for Chanel’s genuine goods”.

The company also accused the group of selling goods of a “significantly lower quality and with reckless disregard or wilful blindness to Chanel’s rights”.

The stores were all allegedly held on Amazon.

“Defendants are causing indivisible harm to Chanel and the consuming public by depriving Chanel of its right to fairly compete for space within search engine results and reducing the visibility of Chanel’s genuine goods on the internet,” the complaint added.

Many of the seller IDs are no longer active and names such as ‘Veronica Groff’, ‘Viola Lance’ and  ‘tu mei fen’ had been used.

In June, as reported by TBO, Chanel also sued  another group of individuals and/or business entities of “unknown makeup” for allegedly selling goods “bearing counterfeits and confusingly similar imitations” of Chanel’s trademarks.

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