Follow @raider5854
Follow us on Twitter & Facebook
The Beatles File Multi-Million Lawsuit to Crack Down on Counterfeit Goods
The Beatles
The complaint names 48 different online sites selling unauthorized merchandise.
The Beatles'
companies Apple Corps Ltd. and Subafilms Ltd. filed a lawsuit on
Thursday against a list of 48 internet dealers and aliases for
promoting, distributing and selling items that bear counterfeit logos or
imitations of their respective trademarks. The defendants in the suit
include shirtsforyou.net, B.F. Store, Good luck to you, GreenMango Store
and HOOK ON YOU.
The lawsuit alleges trademark counterfeiting and
infringement, “false designation of origins” to confuse potential
buyers, common law unfair competition and common law trademark
infringement. According to the lawsuit, the defendants are either
located in or distribute their products from territories with lax
trademark enforcement. Besides their own websites, the suit says the
goods were also available from the sellers on commercial sites such as
Amazon, eBay, Bonanza.com and Etsy.
According to the suit, the
companies have sold items that include bed linens and pillowcases,
apparel for men, women and toddlers, such as tank tops, T-shirts,
jackets, hats, shoes, onesies, cases for mobile telephones, pendants,
backpacks and doormats, and that the items are of “a quality
substantially and materially different than that of Plaintiffs’
respective, genuine goods.”
The legal relief asked for includes injunctions to stop the
manufacture, advertising, distribution and sale of the goods, a block on
registration and use of the domain names involved in the offending
websites, getting commercial sites (such as Amazon, eBay and Etsy) to
remove any listings of their goods, along with monetary damages of $2
million for each counterfeit trademark used or product sold.
Apple Corps Ltd. -- owned by the two living Beatles, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, and the estates of the late John Lennon and George Harrison -- owns
and controls the exclusive merchandising rights “and other intangible
rights in the name of the Beatles,” according to the complaint.
Subafilms Ltd. is an associated company also owned by the Beatles
related to the merchandising rights from the Fab Four's 1967 animated
movie Yellow Submarine.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments Are Moderated And Saved