Diesel wins lawsuit against 'Cybersquatters'

London - Diesel's determination to win it's battle against counterfeiters has paid off, as the Italian fashion label has won its lawsuit against a group of 'cybersquatters.'

The US district court in New York ruled in the company favoured and found the defendants guilty of illegally selling their fake goods under domain names copied from Diesel via a network of 83 websites, awarding Diesel with 2 million US dollars in damages.

"This is another great battle that we have won, but it's not the end of the war," commented Renzo Rosso, founder of Diesel. "The online market offers great opportunity for all brands and we were the first fashion brand that acknowledged this with the launch of our first diesel.com webstore, which opened in 1996. But the opening also brought enormous commercial trade risk, which takes constant effort to counter such attacks. Every day brings a new challenge - but we owe it to our brand and our customers."

Diesel wins lawsuit against 'cybersquatting'

The ruling comes more than a year after Diesel filed its lawsuit against the defendants which owned the websites and accused them of trademark counterfeiting, trademark infringement, trademark diluted and violations of the federal anti-cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act. In 2014, the force found a network of 83 websites belonging to nine individuals which gave the false impression that they were authorized to sell genuine Diesel products. The websites in fact sold thousands of poor quality replicas, which in turn tarnished the brand's reputation.

In order to better protect the Diesel brand and its consumers from falling prey to counterfeiters, the company established a special task force. "We will continue to fight to protect our brand by using state-of-the-art technologies, and we hope that our victory will act as an example to other brands. We can not afford to show any tolerance to fraudsters - both online and offline," added Russo.

The US District Court also imposed a permanent ban on the nine defendants, barring them from using any kind of Diesel trademark in combination with illegal advertising an the sale of any products. In addition, the court also ordered the defendants to take down all the domains and ordered them to pass on all remaining counterfeit goods to Diesel to be destroyed.

OTB, the parent company of Diesel, Viktor & Rolf and Maison Margiela, is known for taking strong action against counterfeiters. In 2015 the group was awarded with the Legal Department of the Year Award in the field intellectual property at the Corporate Counsel Awards for its continual battle to defend its intellectual property.

Photo: Diesel Facebook