Lululemon doesn’t want anyone else squeezing profit out of its trademarks.
In January, the Canadian athleisure brand filed three nearly identical lawsuits in the Illinois Northern District Court, each alleging that a list of e-commerce sellers have violated its trademarks by selling counterfeit products bearing striking resemblance to Lululemon’s genuine products.
The complaint alleges that the defendants “target United States consumers using one or more seller aliases” to sell infringing and counterfeit versions of Lululemon products. The company alleges those actions have caused it damage and injury.
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“Lululemon is forced to file this action to combat defendants’ counterfeiting of its registered Lululemon trademarks, as well as to protect unknowing consumers from purchasing counterfeit Lululemon products over the internet,” the company states in its complaint.
Those products, it goes on to say, tarnish its trademarks and brand reputation. And, per its complaint, the company believes those items are primarily sold to U.S.-based consumers by people who “reside and/or operate in the People’s Republic of China or other foreign jurisdictions with lax trademark enforcement systems, or redistribute products from the same or similar sources in those locations.”
According to Lululemon, those sellers hawk their alleged counterfeit goods on e-commerce marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, DHgate, TikTok, Walmart and Temu.
“E-commerce stores operating under the seller aliases often include content and images that make it very difficult for consumers to distinguish such stores from Lululemon’s website or another authorized retailer,” the company asserts in its claim, noting that none of the defendants are authorized resellers, nor do they have consent or authorization to use Lululemon’s trademarks.
Because of their purported aliases, Lululemon contends, it’s impossible to identify the sellers’ true identities and whether they are somehow linked or related to one another.
However, the company speculates in the complaints that at least some of the operators of those aliases could be connected to one another. In the complaint, it notes that many of the listings it has flagged bear resemblance to one another, whether in the templates used for imagery, the way the storefronts are set up and registered, the descriptions of products and even “the same incorrect grammar and misspellings.”
These factors, Lululemon states, could show patterns.
“Counterfeit Lululemon products for sale by the seller aliases bear similar irregularities and indicia of being counterfeit to one another, suggesting that the…products were manufactured by and come from a common source and that defendants are interrelated,” counsel for Lululemon wrote.
Part of that practice, it alleges, is enabled by the policies of marketplaces, which Lululemon says enables sellers to re-up new aliases to sell counterfeits.
“Such seller alias registration patterns are one of many common tactics used by e-commerce store operators…to conceal their identities and the full scope and interworking of their counterfeiting operation, and to avoid being shut down,” Lululemon contends.
Lululemon accuses the various sellers of violating the Lanham Act by infringing its trademarks, creating counterfeits and perpetuating false designation of origin. It asks a judge to enjoin the defendants from selling using Lululemon trademarks, portraying non-genuine products as Lululemon items and more.
The Canadian company also requests that the defendants’ domain names be turned over to it and that marketplaces with notice of an injunction “disable and cease displaying any advertisements used by or associated with defendants in connection with the sale of counterfeit and infringing goods using the Lululemon trademarks.”
It also seeks monetary damages related to the alleged counterfeit sales.
Lululemon did not return Sourcing Journal’s request for comment on the lawsuits or its intellectual property practices.
