‘It’s daylight robbery’: Luxury bag-makers don’t take kindly to people buying fakes;
July 29, 2009Imitation might well be the most sincere form of flattery, but trademark infringement is against the law. The designs are the intellectual property of the companies that develop them. Anyone else who sells them infringes on their trademarks, even if they acknowledge that they are fakes. “A trademark is one of the most important assets of a company,” said Celine Tremblay, a trademark agent with the Montreal office of Gowling Lafleur Henderson. “If you decide to buy a fake, you are buying it for the trademark. But when you pay $50 for a replica gucci handbags, you’re not buying a Vuitton.”A fake need not be an exact replica to be deemed a trademark infringement. It just has to look enough like the real thing to be confusingly similar.“The question is: ‘When you see the fake, will you think it is authorized?’ If you can answer yes, then there is confusion,” Tremblay said.An executive with Louis Vuitton, perhaps the most copied luxury brand, calls knockoffs “the daylight robbery of our intellectual property.”Barbara Kolsun, senior vice-president and legal counsel for Kate Spade, is more dramatic. She calls the women who sell fakes at purse parties across the United States “the new drug dealers.”Lest one be tempted to think of buying purses as a victimless crime, it has been alleged by law-enforcement authorities that links exist between designer fakes and criminal networks involved in money laundering, drug trafficking and, in some cases, terrorism.The FBI has recovered al-Qaida training manuals urging members to sell fake goods to raise funds for terrorist operations, according to a story last fall in the National Post, which also cited a report submitted to the United States Congress by the Washington-based Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition that said raids on counterfeit operations in New York have found direct links to al-Qaida.One Montreal fashion veteran who has been selling high-end knockoffs of Vuitton and Prada replica chanel handbags, priced in the $200 to $300 range, at accessory sales in rented hotel conference rooms in Montreal and Toronto, said the story made her wonder if she wanted to continue selling knockoffs. Kolsun told the Wall Street Journal recently that for each legitimate sale, the company counts a comparable sum lost to counterfeiters - as much as $70 million a year.An illegal knockoff can be a trademark infringement, which is a civil offense, or, if it is substantially indistinguishable from a trademark, it can be considered counterfeit. Counterfeiting is a criminal offense.And increasingly, in the U.S., companies and law-enforcement authorities are cracking down on people selling knockoffs,christian louboutin including the “bag ladies” who sell Canal Street-type knockoffs at purse parties across the country.These luxury-goods companies employ in-house investigators and sometimes tip off law-enforcement agencies to where knockoffs are being sold. Vuitton says it assisted in more than 3,400 raids worldwide last year, including purse parties. LOAD-DATE: March 20, 2004 LANGUAGE: ENGLISH GRAPHIC: Color Photo: LOUIS VUITTON; A real Louis Vuitton bag from the Speedy line sells for $715. One of the more classic Vuitton styles.; Color Photo: LOUIS VUITTON; Genuine Vuitton bags come in tasteful packaging that includes fabric dust bags (draped over paper bag), which have enough currency themselves to show up on eBay.replica hermes handbags Now even some fakes come with knockoff dust bags (folded at bottom).
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