Louis Vuitton v. Veit

Citation: Louis Vuitton Malletier v. Veit, 211 F. Supp. 2d 567 (E.D. Pa. 2002), amended by, 2002 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 13336 (E.D. Pa. July 15, 2002).

Factual Background
Defendant's sold counterfeit LOUIS VUITTON handbags and OAKLEY sunglasses and offered those products at various websites, including "watchreplica.com," "replicatime.com," and "louisvuitton-replicas.com." Plaintiffs sent a cease-and-desist letter to defendants, but they continued to sell counterfeit products on their websites. Defendants continued to sell counterfeit products even after plaintiffs sued defendants for trademark counterfeiting, infringement, dilution, and cybersquatting.

Trial Court Proceedings
The court granted plaintiffs' motion for default judgment holding that defendants' use of plaintiffs' marks and the domain name "louisvuitton-replicas.com" constituted trademark counterfeiting, infringement, dilution, (federal and state), and cybersquatting. The court awarded $1,500,000 in statutory damages for defendants' willful counterfeiting ($1,000,000 for the six LOUIS VUITTON marks and $500,000 for the two OAKLEY marks) and $100,000 in statutory damages under the ACPA. The court awarded the maximum $100,000 under ACPA because of the defendants' "egregious" use of plaintiff Louis Vuitton's trademark as part of a domain name to sell counterfeit LOUIS VUITTON products. And the court awarded plaintiffs $46,504.88 in attorney’s fees in costs.

Finally, the court permanently enjoined defendants from using plaintiffs' marks at issue or any other confusingly similar or dilutive marks. The court rejected plaintiffs' request to enjoin defendants from using about 80 trademarks owned by plaintiffs, not just the eight marks at issue in the case. Although the court found defendants likely infringed more than these eight marks, plaintiffs' complaint failed to allege violations regarding other marks, and plaintiffs failed to introduce any supporting evidence regarding additional marks with its motion for default.

This page uses content from Finnegan’s [[Internet] Trademark Case Summaries]. This entry is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.