A client walks by an American Eagle retailer on November 21, 2023 in Glendale, California.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Pictures
American Eagle Outfitters is suing Amazon for trademark infringement, alleging the e-commerce large used branding from its Aerie clothes line in search outcomes, main shoppers to “inferior high quality knock-offs.”
In a lawsuit filed Wednesday, American Eagle accused Amazon of “flagrant, unauthorized use” of the Aerie and Offline by Aerie emblems on its website to deceive customers into believing the merchandise had been out there on Amazon, drive visitors to its platform and promote competing merchandise. The grievance was filed in U.S. District Court docket for the Southern District of New York.
American Eagle mentioned it did not authorize Amazon to promote merchandise from its Aerie line of yoga pants, lingerie, loungewear and different apparel, including that it “deliberately declined so Aerie can foster its personal model identification and buyer expertise.” American Eagle, based in 1977, launched the Aerie model in 2006.
A client looking for Aerie merchandise on Google will see sponsored and natural hyperlinks to Amazon’s web site, the lawsuit says. Clicking on a hyperlink results in an Amazon webpage that “shows solely knock-offs and ‘dupes'” of Aerie merchandise, together with sweatshirts and train shorts, American Eagle alleges. The corporate mentioned it notified Amazon “over a month in the past” of the infringing merchandise, however says they had been relabeled with misspellings of its Aerie emblems, together with “Aeries,” “Arie” or “Aries.”
“These advertisements are meant to (and do) trick prospects into considering that by clicking the supplied hyperlink, they are going to be capable to ‘Store Aerie’ or ‘Save on Offline by Aerie’ on the ‘Official Amazon Web site,'” the grievance states. “These statements are obviously false as a result of prospects can not store for Aerie merchandise on Amazon.”
Lots of the alleged Aerie knock-offs referenced within the lawsuit are offered by third-party sellers on Amazon’s on-line market. Launched in 2000, {the marketplace} permits companies to hawk their items on the corporate’s website. It is amassed hundreds of thousands of sellers, and accounts for greater than half of all items offered on the location.
Amazon has confronted comparable complaints for years. In 2016, shoemaker Birkenstock introduced it could pull its merchandise from Amazon in response to a surge in counterfeits. That yr, German automaker Daimler AG sued Amazon after it found knock-off variations of Mercedes-Benz wheels offered by a third-party vendor.
In 2019, Amazon added a line to the “threat components” part of its annual monetary submitting warning buyers of the rising risk of third-party sellers peddling counterfeits. Since then, the corporate has stepped up its efforts to police counterfeits on its website, launching a workforce that pursues legal motion in opposition to counterfeiters, submitting lawsuits and rolling out instruments to assist manufacturers defend their emblems.
Amazon representatives did not instantly reply to a request for remark. The corporate has beforehand mentioned it prohibits the sale of counterfeits on its website.
American Eagle is looking for an injunction and monetary damages based mostly on Amazon’s alleged trademark infringement.
WATCH: How the U.S. authorities and Amazon are combating Chinese language counterfeits
