Reuters: Lifestyle: Gucci wins $4.66 million, ban on Guess knock-offs

Reuters: Lifestyle Reuters.com is your source for breaking news, business, financial and investing news, including personal finance and stocks. Reuters is the leading global provider of news, financial information and technology solutions to the world's media, financial institutions, businesses and individuals. // via fulltextrssfeed.com

Gucci wins $4.66 million, ban on Guess knock-offs May 22nd 2012, 01:10 By Jonathan Stempel Mon May 21, 2012 9:10pm EDT (Reuters) - A U.S. judge said Gucci may recover just $4.66 million in its lawsuit accusing apparel retailer Guess Inc of copying its trademarked designs, a small fraction of the more than $120 million sought by the Italian luxury goods company. U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin said that while Guess infringed some trademarks, Gucci was not entitled to damages reflecting lost sales or harm to its brand, calling an analysis from its damages expert "highly speculative." She also awarded Gucci, a unit of Paris-based PPR SA, a permanent injunction against Guess' use of three of the four challenged designs. The payout reflects profit from specific items where Gucci trademarks were infringed. Gucci had accused Guess of trying to "Gucci-ize" its product line by selling wallets, belts, shoes and other items whose designs copied or mimicked its own. It claimed that this confused customers and diluted its brand. Louis Ederer, a lawyer for Gucci, did not respond immediately to a request for comment. Paul Marciano, CEO of Guess, said in a statement the judgment showed Gucci had "overreached" and "misled the court with a number of facts that were unsupported by the evidence." "Overall, we are extremely satisfied and vindicated that this case should have never been filed," Marciano said. A lawyer for co-defendant Marc Fisher Footwear LLC, which the judge held responsible for some of the payout, did not respond immediately to a request for comment. Gucci had challenged Guess' alleged infringement of four designs: green-red-green stripes, a stylized "Square G," a group of four interlocking "G"s known as a "Quattro G," and a script logo. All but the last of these are covered by the injunction. Gucci, founded in 1921, is one of many luxury goods companies to sue alleged copycats. Scheindlin last month oversaw a three-week, non-jury trial in the case, resulting in Monday's 104-page opinion. "Over the past three years, the parties have put in countless hours and spent untold sums of money, all in the service of fashion - what Oscar Wilde aptly called 'a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months'," she wrote. In the wake of her decision, "it is my hope that this ugliness will be limited to the runway and shopping floor, rather than spilling over into the courts," she added. The case is Gucci America Inc v. Guess Inc et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 09-04373. (Additional reporting by Basil Katz; Editing by Matthew Lewis and Paul Tait) Link this Share this Digg this Email Reprints

You are receiving this email because you subscribed to this feed at blogtrottr.com. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe from this feed, or manage all your subscriptions