GUCCI LOSES TRADEMARK INFRINGEMENT CASE AGAINST GUESS IN FRANCE

Gucci has been accusing Guess of trademark violations for years, and on Friday the Court of Paris reached a decision in the matter that has already been addressed in Italian and American courts. 

The French court ruled in Guess's favor, finding no trademark infringement, no counterfeiting and no unfair competition between the luxury Italian label and American mall brand. Gucci's request for €55 million (about $62 million USD) in damages was denied and instead the company was ordered to pay Guess €30,000 about ($34,000 USD). The court also nullified Gucci's trademark of three of its "G" logos. In a statement, a representative for Gucci responded saying the company strongly disagrees with the verdict and "will certainly and immediately bring an appeal against the decision."

This marks Guess's second victory against Gucci so far. However, in 2012, a New York court ruled that Guess was guilty of copying four of the five trademarked logos Gucci addressed in its claim. According to the judge's decision in that case, the logos in question were the following:

a)     the green-red-green Stripe mark

b)     the repeating GG pattern

c)      the diamond motif trade dress, which is the repeating GG pattern with a pair of inverted Gs in each corner rendered in a brown/beige color combination,

d)     the stylized G design mark

e)     the script Gucci design mark

In a dramatic court case that involved tears and shady e-mails, Guess only ended up having to pay $4.7 million in damages, which was nothing compared to the $124 million Gucci was seeking and small change when you consider that Guess made nearly $2.7 billion in revenue in 2011. 

Two major points weakened Gucci's case and contributed to the small payout. First, the judge noted that Gucci could not have been ignorant of Guess's designs until it finally filed the case in 2009, especially since both brands had similar advertising budgets and stores near each other, often in the same mall. (Guess was founded in 1981 and started producing the designs in question around 1995) And secondly, the judge ruled Guess had diluted Gucci's logos, not counterfeiting them, saying, "courts have uniformly restricted trademark counterfeiting claims to those situations where entire products have been copied stitch-for-stitch."

http://fashionista.com/2015/02/french-court-rejects-gucci-trademark-claims-against-guess-paris-france