Burberry Earns $100 Million In Counterfeiting Lawsuit

BURBERRY was awarded $100 million yesterday by a Manhattan Federal court, which ruled that a network of Chinese internet counterfeiters had infringed upon the brand's trademark.

WWD report that the defendants, who ran websites such as yesburberryvision.com and buyburberry.com, were known to have sold at least 22 different product types all bearing imitations of the British heritage brand's various trademarks, such as its iconic plaid check and equestrian knight logo.


The resolution of the case, which was originally filed in January at Manhattan Federal Court, comes after months of waiting for the defendants to reply to the accusations and appear in court - neither of which was ever done.
The domain names for all the infringing sites will now be transferred to Burberry, allowing the brand to cut off any associated internet providers, web designers, sponsored search engine or ad-word providers, merchant account providers, payment processors and others from doing business with the defendants in this matter.
Additionally, Burberry has won the right to intercept any associated monies held by PayPal Inc - the payment processor for the counterfeit sites - and will also now be able to hold third parties such as Google, Twitter and Facebook accountable for associating with the various sites.
Last month, Hermes was also awarded approximately £63 million after winning their case against 34 counterfeit websites.