Opinion ID: 794951
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Parties and Facts

Text: 6 Vuitton, a French design firm, began selling trunks and accessories in the United States in 1893. In 1896 it created the Toile Monogram, featuring entwined LV initials with three motifs: a curved diamond with a four-point star inset, its negative, and a circle with a four-leafed flower inset. Vuitton registered trademarks in this design pattern as well as the individual unique shapes with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Having been used exclusively and continuously, those trademarks, the Louis Vuitton Toile Monogram Designs (Toile marks), are now incontestible. See 15 U.S.C. § 1065 (providing, with certain exceptions, that registered marks in continuous use for five consecutive years after registration are incontestible). 7 In October 2002 plaintiff launched a series of handbags featuring new signature designs created by Marc Jacobs and Japanese artist Takashi Murakami. The new bags (Murakami handbags) incorporated an update on the fashion house's famous Toile marks. The fresh design — coined the Louis Vuitton Monogram Multicolore pattern (Multicolore mark) — was a modified version of the Toile marks, printed in 33 bright colors (Murakami colors) on a white or black background. 8 Plaintiff states that it spent over $4 million in 2003-2004 advertising and promoting the Multicolore mark and associated handbags. In addition, the new design garnered significant media attention. CBS's The Early Show and publications ranging from USA Today and The New York Times to People, Women's Wear Daily, Marie Claire, and Vogue all featured the Murakami handbags. Celebrities including Jennifer Lopez, Reese Witherspoon, and Madonna were photographed with the bags in tow. 9 At the time plaintiff filed its complaint, it had sold nearly 70,000 handbags and accessories with the Multicolore mark design in the United States for between $360 and $3,950 each, amounting to over $40 million. Of that sum, $25 million was attributable to the white background design and $16 million to the black background design. 10 Defendant Dooney & Bourke, an American handbag designer and manufacturer, was founded in 1975. Since 2001 as part of the Dooney & Bourke's Signature and Mini Signature lines, the company has sold bags featuring the DB monogram of interlocking initials, a registered trademark, in a repeated pattern. The handbags sell for between $125 and $400. 11 In the fall of 2002 Peter Dooney, president and chief designer of Dooney & Bourke, began collaborating with Teen Vogue magazine on a joint promotional project as the magazine was being launched. The magazine selected a group of teenaged girls to travel with Dooney to Italy in March 2003 to help develop Dooney & Bourke handbags appealing to teenagers. The group, dubbed the It Team, was photographed looking into Vuitton's store window display featuring handbags with the Multicolore marks on a white background. Another photograph taken during the trip showed the group in a factory viewing a swatch of fabric with the Multicolore mark on a black background. 12 A year later, in late July 2003 Dooney & Bourke introduced its It-Bag collection, which featured the DB monogram in an array of bright colors set against a white background. The intertwined initials, with the D and the B displayed in contrasting colors, were printed forward and backward in repeating diagonal rows. The handbags also sported a multicolor zipper, with fabric similar to that used by Vuitton, and a small pink enamel heart bearing the legend Dooney & Bourke on a tag hanging from the handle. In October 2003 Dooney & Bourke began selling the handbags with a black background. The It-Bag collection now includes a variety of colored backgrounds (periwinkle, bubble gum, grape) in addition to black and white.