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By Hilbert Haar
Sint Maarten is the undisputed counterfeiting capital of the Caribbean and the counterfeited brands hardly take any action against it because the market is so small. As long as the costs outweigh the benefits, counterfeiters can do whatever they like.
Casino-owner Francesco Corallo must have thought something like this when he (allegedly) decorated his Vegas casino in Cole Bay with Luis Vuitton themed decorations. He even outfitted his staff with counterfeit Vuitton uniforms.
But in this case, these decisions are already having consequences and there is potentially more to come. On behalf of Vuitton, Disosa Property Protection Services has already put a lien on $350,000 that is in the casino’s bank account and it will go to court and demand financial compensation for the trademark infringements. It also demands that the casino destroys the Vuitton-themed uniforms of the casino staff.
So far, Corallo and his co-director Roy Moes at Corlac Games have not reacted to the rather unexpected demands. Maybe they think that they are sitting pretty and that there is not much the French luxury brand can do about it; they may even have a point.
There have been other disputes about intellectual property right in the past. Like the one of convenience store 7-Eleven against a local grocery store that used a similar logo and the name 7-Alive.
7-Eleven battled the grocery store for ten years. But it did not win. The retail-giant – Dallas-based 7-Eleven has 7,100 stores in the United States alone – made a crucial mistake in the way it approached the dispute in court. The Dutch Supreme Court ruled in May 2009 that “7-Eleven’s reliance on copyright protection could not succeed because it was asserted without sufficient documentation that 7-Eleven can be regarded as the entitled party to the work.”
7-Alive argued that the copyright protection of the 7-Eleven logo had expired since it was first introduced in 1946. The court dismissed the argument that the logo was first made public in 1968, saying that this logo did not significantly differ from the one in 1946.
The position of Luis Vuitton against the Vegas casino could be stronger, because, after all, the brand is registered with the Bureau for Intellectual Property in Sint Maarten.
The court will handle this case in the coming months. The outcome will be interesting for all those who make money by selling counterfeit products on St. Maarten’s markets and in stores on Front and Back Street.
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