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PARIS - LVMH Mot Hennessy Louis Vuitton has won a court injunction against the Vivastreet classified ad Web site, which had allowed its users to sell the luxury goods company's fragrance brands in France.
In what LVMH lawyers heralded as an unprecedented move, Paris' commercial court, the Tribunal de Commerce, ordered Vivastreet in November to block ads for all LVMH-owned scent brands, including Guerlain, Kenzo and Christian Dior; the court also agreed to impose a fine of 500 euros, or $730 at current exchange, for each LVMH fragrance sold through vivastreet.fr in the future.
"What is really new here is that the injunction doesn't rely on the alleged liability of the Web site and doesn't try to compensate for the past situation, but gives a solution for the future by ordering the Web site to block a priori," explained LVMH's lawyer Nicolas Brault, who is a partner of Watrin Brault Associates. He said until this injunction, LVMH would have had to check the site daily and order its...