A U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, California ruled in favor of World Marketing Inc.’s Visitor clothing line over surfwear giant Quicksilver’s VSTR apparel line in a trademark infringement suit, according to California Apparel News. Quicksilver was sentenced, after an eight-person jury found it guilty of infringing on World Marketing’s Visitor menswear label, to pay World Marketing $3.6 million in royalties and punitive damages.
Quicksilver’s VSTR label, which stands for “visiting, surfing, traveling and responsibility” and is promoted by surfer Kelly Slater, was launched in early 2012. In March 2012, World Marketing Inc. sent Quicksilver a cease-and-desist letter after it heard that Quicksilver was specifying that VSTR should be pronounced “visitor,” which World Marketing Inc. felt infringed on their already established Visitor line, which had been in existence since 1987 and trademarked since 1998.
“What was important [about the case] is that World Marketing stood up for its corporate identity, which is Visitor,” said Clara Shin, one of the attorneys at Covington & Burling, the law firm that represented World Marketing. “I feel great that the jury took all the facts into account and sent a strong message to Quicksilver that it must respect the intellectual property rights of others.”
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