Danish supermarket fined over Ralph Lauren fakes
A Danish court has fined local supermarket Føtex DKK 200,000 ($36,500) for selling counterfeit Ralph Lauren polo shirts.
Føtex had admitted that 1,624 polo shirt fakes had been sold after Ralph Lauren notified the company in June 2012.
The supermarket was forced to stop selling any more of the shirts, which had been advertised across Denmark, a month later.
Copenhagen’s Commercial and Maritime Court had to decide whether the luxury brand was entitled to compensation for the counterfeiting. In a ruling on January 10, it issued a fine of less than half the DKK 500,000 ($91,200) that Ralph Lauren requested.
The fine is not a high amount for trademark infringement, said Claes Wildfang, an associate partner at Danish law firm LETT.
Under Danish law, he explained, trademark infringers must pay compensation if they are negligent – in this case if Føtex knew or should have known that the shirts were fake.
“You can’t just say you have infringed my rights and thus you are liable to pay,” he said.
“It’s interesting here that the court said you should have known, as a professional buyer, that the shirts were fake,” he added.
At the time, the shirts were sampled and bought from a new supplier in Poland, Wildfang explained, but they were not checked properly when delivered to Føtex. The supermarket had argued that because of its size, and its use of automated systems, checking the goods again would have been difficult.
“But this was not good enough for the court,” said Wildfang, “It said that Føtex should have had some kind of quality control.
“What’s interesting is how much the court is demanding the supermarket must do to ensure the products they are sourcing are genuine,” he said.
“The ruling confirms Supreme Court precedent,” he added, “If you are a supermarket you can’t rely on random sampling – you have to check before you put products in your store ... you must have some kind of quality control.”
Føtex can appeal to the Danish Supreme Court, but that option is changing on February 1, 2014. From then, parties in trademark cases will have to appeal to Denmark’s High Court, which is split into two divisions.
