Louis Vuitton Opposes Trademark Application For Small Family Business Selling Gardening Tools
from the why? dept
If you go back and read nearly all of the posts we’ve done on luxury fashion company Louis Vuitton, you’ll see a history of a company that is about as big a pain in the ass when it comes to intellectual property bullying as you’ll find. The company often times takes it’s “protecting” of it’s IP rights, particularly trademark rights, to ridiculous extremes.
But I have to say the company’s opposition to the trademark registration for a gardening tools company had me double-checking to make sure it wasn’t parody.
The Norfolk-based company, L V Bespoke, was started by couple Lawrence and Victoria Osborne after their construction business was shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic. They sell plants, steel plant supports and a variety of handmade home and garden items. The fashion powerhouse, which owns its iconic interlocking “L” and “V” trademark, is opposing L V Bespoke’s application to register their name as a UK trademark at a hearing on Monday, The Eastern Daily Press reported.
“Louis Vuitton say they have superior rights to use the initials ‘L V’,” Victoria Osborne told the paper. “They have also raised concerns over our handcrafted metalwork products because they use metal for their ‘L V’ symbols on their handbags.”
If you’re not laughing at this point, you should be. The manner in which L V Bespoke is using those two letters, which come from the founders’ initials as it happens, is not infringing on Louis Vuitton’s trademarks for any number of reasons.
For starters, they operate in entirely different markets, no matter Louis Vuitton’s ham-fisted attempt to conflate its use of metal on handbags with — double-checks notes — plant poles for the garden. Add to that the fact that the trademark applied for is not just “L V”, but “L V Bespoke.” When taken in total, that term doesn’t bring to mind the fashion brand.
The Osbornes, who have already spent “tens of thousands of pounds” during the dispute, argued that Louis Vuitton can not claim exclusive rights to the letters “L” and “V.”
“Some of the things raised at the hearing were laughable and eyebrow-raising,” Victoria Osborne said.
That they’ve put up this much of a fight so far is impressive. However, the Osborne’s have also indicated that the business doesn’t have the money to fight beyond this. So either the UKIPO will be sensible, or L V Bespoke will need to operate without its trademark.
Filed Under: gardening tools, l v, likelihood of confusion, trademark, ukipo
Companies: l v bespoke, louis vuitton
Comments on “Louis Vuitton Opposes Trademark Application For Small Family Business Selling Gardening Tools”
We need to put a law that threatens jail time if a company does this shit. It might be excessive, but this needs to stop.
Reminds me of the time the Hilton hotel chain took umbrage at a small New Zealand hotel that called itself the Blackball Hilton, for as far as I can remember, the exact same reason that the person who started the hotel in the small town of Blackball, South Island of New Zealand, was surnamed Hilton. The hotel, which I’ve been in, is a pleasant place to stop for a drink on a hot day, or a cold wet and windy winter day, and now calls itself Formerly The Blackball Hilton.
Ever since that time, I’ve been wondering why the Hilton chain never took on the movie industry about the Bangkok Hilton movie/s. Do they have a good explanation for their slackness?
Re:
Bangkok Hilton is an excellent movie (and originally a TV miniseries), but it was made in 1989. While copyright and trademarks existed back then, it’s only in the intervening decades where the current level of insanity surrounding them have appeared. Maybe it was a time where common sense prevailed a little more in legal circles.
Also, I thought I’d do a little random digging to see how many hotels Hilton operated back then compared to now. What I saw, interestingly, is that they were actually up for sale in 1989 (https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-08-11-fi-277-story.html), although I don’t see follow-ups about a buyer, and they also suffered a terrorist attack in Cartagena that year (https://web.archive.org/web/20220621035647/https://apnews.com/3e1e4d812ea90ae78a1d4a55f6e9414b). I assume the current management were somehow too busy to be shaking down random TV producers.
Gone are the days dictionary words are in trademark dispute — two words outta do the trick now😉
Gone are the days when dictionary words were in a trademark dispute – two words won’t do anymore😉
Luis Vutton's main purpose
Is to identify people who are OK with spending large sums of money on poorly made fashion items made by actual unpaid slaves in Africa.
Anyone you see with one of their bags, you know exactly where their moral compass points.
I guess they only go after small fry that they know they can easily bully, otherwise why aren’t they after LIV Golf, the Saudi’s PGA competitor? Afraid of an actual fight?
Liverpool Victoria
Then there is Liverpool Victoria, the large UK insurance company, which apparently acquired the LV.com domain name from Louis Vuitton. I guess a quantity of money changed hands for that.
Solve this with 1 simple trick…
If you challenge another mark & fail to offer up more than we both use metal as a reason you pay the company you sued double what their defense cost.
Imagine, Monster would be out of business after the 3rd or 4th lawsuit over a green M, we’d be bereft of shitty lawsuits to mock but it might encourage some sanity from the lawyers from brands.
Something something Oleg Cassini’s lawyers calling up NASA in an absolute shit fit for DARING to use HIS name on their probe. Jean-Domenique Cassini was unavailable for comment on the matter.
That or maybe its time to just sanction the hell out of the firms bringing these cases that they should know have no merit to them.
Our clients customers are SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO stupid!!
– How stupid are they??
They are so stupid that they will believe that the luxury fashion brand is branching out into gardening accessories because they are made of metal just like what our buttons are made out of!
The idea of Anti-SLAPP caught on, perhaps we can a MIAH law that just looks to see if the base claim managed to make sense to a moron in a hurry who happens to wear a robe, who has the power to make the target financially whole again without wasting the courts valuable time.
Not surprised
These legal cases are getting quite ridiculous. You only need to look at Wikipedia to see that companies such as LV pay little to no attention to their online branding. Yet the minute some small company that no one has ever heard of uses anything remotely like their branding, they start making legal threats. Maybe put some time and effort into Wikipedia and socials?