Trademark Infringement | Chanel
Chanel Inc. has filed a sweeping cyberpiracy and trademark infringement lawsuit in Nevada against 399 websites the company accuses of selling counterfeit items bearing the luxury retailer’s name.
The suit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas seeks unspecified damages from unnamed operators of websites that the New York-based fashion house alleges operate from China, the Bahamas and other overseas jurisdictions where trademark enforcement is lax.
Lead attorney for Chanel, Stephen Gaffigan of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., was out of the office and unable to immediately respond Wednesday to messages seeking comment.
The suit was first reported by the Las Vegas Sun.
The complaint takes the trademark infringement battle beyond a fight to stamp out street corner knock-offs.
It seeks an order to seize or disable website domain names and an injunction barring defendants — identified only as “partnerships and unincorporated associations” — from selling counterfeit goods including handbags, wallets, shoes, boots, sunglasses, scarves, T-shirts, watches and jewelry bearing the Chanel name.
Gaffigan is also the lead lawyer in similar cases in federal court in Las Vegas involving retailers Tiffany (NJ) LLC, and Louis Vuitton Malletier, S.A.
The Tiffany lawsuit filed April 18 targets 223 unnamed website operators, including several that are also named in the Chanel case.
The Louis Vuitton lawsuit, filed May 9, identifies 182 websites as defendants.
The lawsuit filed Tuesday alleges offending websites use Chanel-sounding or Tiffany-sounding names and keyword optimization methods to show up atop Google and Yahoo search engine lists.
The plea to the court calls domain names such as chanelOnline.com, replica-coco-lv.com, tiffanyand-co.com and chanelhandbags-outlet.net “identical or confusingly similar to” actual Chanel and Tiffany names.
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