Gucci vs. Guess: A trademark lawsuit over the letter ‘G’

It's a battle over a stylized initial. CK is Calvin Klein. YSL is Yves Saint Laurent. G is Gucci — or Guess. Therein lies fashion's newest legal fight.

In 2008, Gucci sued Guess for trademark infringement, claiming Guess was knocking off their G logos. The court proceedings for this case started on Thursday.

"It's a massive, complicated scheme to knock off Gucci's best-known and iconic designs," Louid Ederer, Gucci's lawyer claimed in court.

Some of the trademarked logos in Gucci's court filing are a "green and red stripe design, a square G, the designer's name in flowing script and a diamond pattern with repeating interlocking G's."

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Bloomberg Businessweek reports that Gucci is seeking $124 million in damages for $221 million worth of Guess product infringements.

Guess isn't backing down from its use of the G, and claims that of the 1,495 Guess products that Gucci is calling into question, 99 percent of them could never be confused with Gucci.

"The numbers don't add up," says Daniel Petrocelli, Guess lawyer. "If there was a scheme, it failed miserably."

Gucci and Guess offer goods at drastically different price points and target different customers, Guess lawyers say. They argue Gucci cannot claim infringement because the company "sat on its rights" for at least seven years before deciding to sue.

As for the three-year gap between Gucci first suing Guess and the 2012 court date, it comes down to a legal embarrassment. Above the Law reports that Gucci's former in-house lead counsel, Jonathan Moss, failed to renew his bar membership and was subsequently "turned out like last season's shoes."

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This lawsuit is biggest fashion fight of its kind since Christian Louboutin sued Yves Saint Laurent over his trademarked red soles.

Trademarked fashion is a tricky business. Forever 21, for example, has been knocking off high-end designers throughout its entire 27-year existence, settling with designers a whopping 5o times. Interestingly enough, in the fashion world, textile prints are subject to copyright, but overall garment design is not.

"Because the law has been so reluctant to focus on fashion specifically as an appropriate subject for protection, [the legal profession] has been called on to pull and stretch other areas of intellectual property to cover bits of fashion," fashion legal expert Susan Scafidi told Jezebel last year.

Gucci vs. Guess are expected to remain in federal court for weeks.

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