Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Fri, 23 Apr 2010 19:01:00 PDT Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100422/1648479149.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100422/1648479149.shtml well beyond reason. We've seen it time and time again -- especially when they sue third parties like Google or eBay. So I guess it shouldn't be too surprising that in their rush to sue, they don't always check all the facts... leading to hilarious scenarios like the one brought to our attention where Gucci accidentally sued Chanel and even got a temporary restraining order against the company.

The timeline, as far as I can tell, goes like this. Last year, Chanel and LVMH sued some websites that were selling counterfeit goods. One of those websites was called MyPurseWorld.com. In a ruling last June, a federal district court in Florida transferred that domain to Chanel, who began using the website to post the court ruling and to post info about other counterfeiting sites. Fair enough (well, I might argue that, but we'll leave it aside for now).

However, earlier this month, Gucci sued a bunch of sites for trademark infringement -- including MyPurseWorld.com. Apparently whoever put together the lawsuit hadn't checked out the site since last June, or discovered that Chanel now owned it and it was being used by that company to post anti-counterfeiting info. So, basically Gucci sued Chanel, claiming that its MyPurseWorld.com site was selling counterfeit Gucci products. They even had Chanel served as a defendant. On top of that, a district court in Manhattan granted a restraining order against "the website or its owner" barring web hosts or ISPs from working with them. Technically, yes, this could have meant that Chanel couldn't work with webhosts or ISPs. Of course, Chanel protested and Gucci quickly backed down, admitting "a minor bit of confusion."

I'm still a bit confused why the judge would totally bar a site from working with a webhost or ISP, but we'll leave that discussion for another day.

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]]> sorry-about-that http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100422/1648479149 Wed, 12 Aug 2009 13:24:43 PDT Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090810/0334145823.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090810/0334145823.shtml Rose M. Welch alerts us to the news that Gucci America has decided to sue a bunch of credit card processors for trademark infringement. Why? Because they processed the credit cards of some online sites that happened to sell fake Gucci bags. This, of course, makes no sense. None of the credit card companies were actually violating Gucci's trademarks at all, and I can't see how they can show those firms actually "used" its trademarks in commerce. This seems like a pure money grab. Gucci already received an award of $5.2 million from the site that used these credit card processors, so this just seems like going after more cash for the same issue, but suing companies further up the chain. I can't see Gucci having much success here, but it reminds us that there really ought to be a Section 230-style safe harbor for trademarks as well.

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]]> that's-a-stretch... http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20090810/0334145823