French luxury goods company Louis Vuitton is seeking damages from several people convicted of selling fake versions of its clothing, shoes and handbags on Alibaba Group Holding Limited’s Taobao shopping websie, according to a Beijing court.
A Beijing district court accepted the lawsuit from Louis Vuitton, owned by LVMH, the world’s largest luxury group, on Monday, according to a statement on the court’s website.
The company is taking three defendants, two with a surname of Liang and the other Han, to court, “asking them to stop infringing on its trademark and is seeking compensation of economic losses of 250,000 yuan ($37,900)”, says the court statement.
The defendants sold the counterfeit goods on Taobao, an online shopping site similar to eBay and Amazon. The lawsuit comes just months after a US clothing industry group asked the United States Trade Representative (USTR) to blacklist Taobao for intellectual property rights violations despite promised by the e-commerce company to resolve the problem.
The three defendants were given unspecified criminal sentences in 2014 for selling counterfeit versions of Louis Vuitton goods, the court said.
SOURCE: Reuters.
Larry Banks is a keen follower of technology and finance. He has worked for a variety of online publications, writing about a diverse range of topics including mobile networks, patents, and Internet video delivery technologies.
