Victoria's Secret, the largest US specialty lingerie retailer, will seek to persuade the US Supreme Court today to give trademark owners more protection from the use of similar names.
The Limited Brands-owned retailer sued owners of Victor's Little Secret soon after the Elizabethtown, Kentucky, seller of sex toys and lingerie opened in 1998. Victor and Cathy Moseley are challenging a ruling that the name of their shop reduces the value of the Victoria's Secret brand, which had US$3.3 billion in lingerie and cosmetics sales last year.
It's the first time the Supreme Court has reviewed the 1996 Federal Trademark Dilution Act, which granted broader protection for well-known trademarks. The question before the high court is whether trademark owners must show actual economic harm, or only the likelihood of harm, before they can challenge the use of a similar name.
"This is the most important trademark case before the Supreme Court in a long time," said Mark Levy, an appellate lawyer in Washington with Howrey, Simon, Arnold & White. He filed papers with the court on behalf of Intel Corp, one of the businesses seeking to uphold the greater protection.
Traditional trademark law is designed to protect consumers from confusion.
The dilution act allows owners of famous marks to sue even if there's no likelihood that consumers would think the two names were related.
Shares of Limited Brands fell US$0.82, or 5.5 percent, to close at US$14.16 on the New York Stock Exchange.
Victoria's Secret, known for catalogs and fashion shows featuring models clad in lacy underwear, accounted for about a third of the Columbus, Ohio-based company's sales last year.
The law was designed on the theory that repeated misuse of famous names reduces their unique value, lawyers for Victoria's Secret contend. For instance, Intel has filed more than 1,000 lawsuits worldwide against companies using Intel-owned names. It's sued Pentium Construction, Pentium Investment Advisors and others using the name of its key computer chip product.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained