Luxury retailer Chanel Inc. sued 399 websites in Las Vegas on Tuesday, charging they’re infringing on its trademarks and selling counterfeit Chanel-branded goods.
Chanel’s suit, filed in U.S. District Court, said the defendants along with Does 1-1,000 likely operate from China “or other foreign jurisdictions with lax trademark enforcement systems.”
Chanel, based in New York, said the counterfeit goods sold include handbags, wallets, shoes, boots, sunglasses, scarves, tee shirts, watches and jewelry.
The suit says that, like Chanel, the defendant websites use search engine optimization (SEO) strategies, including placing content on the Internet that’s likely to show up in keyword searches on sites like Google and Yahoo.
“The defendants are using counterfeits of Chanel’s name and the Chanel marks in order to make their websites selling illegal goods appear more relevant and attractive to search engines across an array of search terms,” the suit says.
Chanel is asking the court to enter an injunction against the defendants barring them from infringing and counterfeiting, to seize the website domain names and to order the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers to transfer to Chanel or disable the domain names.
The lawsuit is related to one filed by the same attorneys against 223 website operators in the same court on April 18 by retailer Tiffany.
Monday’s Chanel lawsuit said 19 of the Chanel defendants are also defendants in the Tiffany case.
They include domain names such as cheaptiffanystore.com and wholesale-cheapjewelry.com.
The lawsuits say Nevada is one of the states where the defendants conduct business through websites, many with Chanel-sounding or Tiffany-sounding names.
Besides those lawsuits, one of the Chanel and Tiffany attorneys sued 182 website operators May 10 in the same court, alleging infringements of Louis Vuitton trademarks and counterfeiting of its goods.
The lawsuits say that because of the explosion of counterfeiting on the Internet, luxury retailers have to “file a massive number of lawsuits, often it turns out, against the same individuals and groups.”
The suits are needed to combat the “erosion and destruction of the goodwill” associated with the luxury brands as counterfeiters typically dupe buyers into purchasing inferior products, the lawsuits say.