A few weeks ago I posted a jacket for sale on eBay. It's a jacket that someone gave to me and I never wore.
I found a prior posting for the same jacket that had sold so I took their listing title and used that. The jacket is made by Orvis and is a bomber, or sometimes called a Harrington style jacket, so Harrington was in the 80 character listing title.
It was up for a while and then flagged by eBay and removed for copyright infringement after a company filed a complaint. It encouraged me to write them if I felt it was in error, which is what I did, explaining that Harrington was not a brand but a description of the style of jacket and it was clearly listed as an Orvis brand garment.
I just woke up this morning, two weeks after I sent that, to this reply:
Thank you for your communication.
Our company act on behalf of G. & G. s.r.l., headquartered at Via C.A. Pizzardi 50, Bologna 40138 (Italy).
G. & G. s.r.l. is the proprietor of several brands and Intellectual Property Rights (“IPRs”), including “BARACUTA” and the “HARRINGTON” trademark, which is registered in several countries, inter alia the United States (registration number 6,033,997), Japan, Norway and Switzerland.
The “BARACUTA” brand originated in Manchester in 1937 and has become particularly well known for its iconic jackets, which have been famously worn over the years by a number of extremely prominent celebrities, such as Elvis Presley, James Dean, Steve McQueen, Frank Sinatra, Ryan O’Neill, The Clash and Daniel Craig.
The “bomber jacket”, originally named BARACUTA G9 (or simply G9), a legendary item that has greatly impacted menswear, was created in 1937 and received a significant degree of publicity by being worn both by Elvis Presley in the film King Creole and by Steve McQueen in various films (and also in his personal life).
In 1964, the G9 jacket was worn by Ryan O’Neill in the US soap opera Peyton Place, in which he played a character named Rodney Harrington. As a result of this publicity, the name “HARRINGTON” was popularly adopted as a name that became synonymous with the BARACUTA G9 jacket. This usage has become so deep-seated that even G. & G. uses the trademark HARRINGTON alongside its BARACUTA and G9 trademarks, as part of its branding.
Therefore, as per the reasons explained above, any exploitation of “HARRINGTON” must be expressly authorized by our client.
You are advertising goods under the HARRINGTON registered name which infringes upon our client’s Intellectual Property Rights. In particular, you are using the HARRINGTON trademark, absent our client’s authorization, in order to promote the sale of products which are not manufactured by the brand owner.
Such a conduct amounts to an infringement of our client's Intellectual Property Rights and is certainly apt to create confusion among consumers as to a possible authorization, endorsement or affiliation with our client.
Regarding use of the trademark “HARRINGTON” by third parties, please be informed that our client has acted successfully against sellers and fashion companies and follows enforcing its trademark rights on “HARRINGTON”.
Thus, we hereby ask you to remove from your advertisement any and all infringing reference to the HARRINGTON trademark causing confusion for the consumer and to refrain from using without authorization the HARRINGTON trademark to sell, promote, advertise or in any event to commercialize goods that do not originate from the trademark owner.
Upon confirmation of the reference’s removal, we can withdraw our complaints allowing you to alter the reported content.
A few things:
- This seems a bit unprofessional. The email domain doesn't link to a website. The claims also seem like a bit of a stretch. Google search Harrington jacket and youll see loads of jackets using the word as it's a style, not a brand. It's like calling a jacket a "Bomber" jacket, but then a company called "Bomber" makes a claim against you for describing an item using an almost universally used term.
- The sender signed it but with no professional signature linking him to the company he claims to represent, nor to his own brand representation company.
But if it is fake/scam, I can't figure out the angle. What's to be gained, what do they care if I use the word in a long eBay title? They're not demanding money out of me.
If it's real, is their claim legitimate? I don't mind to change my listing title, though I'd rather not be bullied out of it, I just wasn't expecting such a lengthy response. I replied assuming it was just some bot or scam and wanted to see what happened.
w~~_7.JPG "pjcdn2005"){kind=avatar}
