California Apparel News

The Los Angeles denim label Miss Me has won an $8.7 million default judgment against a ring of counterfeit websites that in one instance had almost an exact replica of the Miss Me website.

The websites claimed to be selling Miss Me denim and other merchandise at a discount. But all they did was collect money through an offshore PayPal account and then never shipped anything, said Sarah Brown, the company’s marketing and public-relations manager.

“There were 10 websites total,” Brown said, noting they had been live since September 2012.

Miss Me discovered the websites a month later when a customer called to complain she had ordered an item online but never received it.

The counterfeit websites had addresses such as www.missme-jeans.org, www.missmejeans.com and www.missmejeansoutlet.com. The real Miss Me website is at www.missme.com.

The Miss Me label, whose parent company is Sweet People Apparel Inc., was awarded ownership of the domain names these companies conducted illegally. Even though the websites were registered in California, Miss Me’s lawyers believe they were operated out of China, Brown said.

This is the first time Miss Me has gone to court to shut down counterfeit websites through a case filed in the U.S. District Court in New York.

Shutting down counterfeit websites can be a tedious task. Several pieces of legislation have been introduced in Congress to address this issue. A bill was introduced in the U.S. Senate in 2010. The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act was meant to give online intellectual-property protection more teeth. It was written to authorize the Department of Justice to file a civil action against a rogue website and seek a preliminary order from the court that the domain name was being used in trafficking counterfeit material. But it never received a full vote on the Senate floor.

In May 2011, U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D–Vt.) introduced the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act to allow the Department of Justice and private industry to seek injunctive relief to close rogue websites. That bill didn’t pass either.

Miss Me has been aggressively addressing the counterfeit issue. In 2011, Miss Me jeans, along with Mek Denim and True Religion, filed a federal lawsuit in New Jersey against a chain of Fame denim stores they said were selling counterfeit Miss Me, Mek Denim and True Religion jeans.

The court issued a seizure order as well as an order restraining Fame’s assets. The case was ultimately settled.

In 2012, Miss Me filed a lawsuit in federal court against Los Angeles–based denim company LA Idol for copyright and trademark infringement for selling fake Miss Me denim jeans.

Ultimately, the court issued an injunction against the continued sale of those jeans. Miss Me also received a settlement of seven figures, Brown said.