EasyWatch, part of Stelios Haji-Ioannou's easyGroup empire, is
in a Dutch court on Wednesday to defend a trade mark lawsuit filed
by Swiss luxury goods group Richemont, owner of the Cartier brand,
over a range of £9.95 watches.
EasyWatch launched in July, selling “great value” watches
online, including models called Portofino Sky and Portofino
Bubbles. "Portofino" is used as a trade mark by some Richemont
products, but easyWatch points out that the name – an Italian port
– is also an easyCruise destination.
Richemont contacted easyWatch in July, telling it to stop using
the trade mark and to stop selling counterfeit watches.
EasyGroup, on behalf of easyWatch, replied that there was no
Portofino watch trademark in Switzerland and that to call easyWatch
Portofino a counterfeit was ridiculous as the easyWatch Portofino
Sky and Portofino Bubbles range cost £9.95 each. A visit to the
websites of some of the Richemont products (Cartier, Van
Cleef&Arpels, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Montblanc) show that their
watches retail at about $2,500. The easyWatch Portofino watches are
decorated with clouds and bubbles respectively while the Richemont
watches are decorated with diamonds.
"If anyone at all could confuse an easyWatch with a Richemont
watch then I should be charging $2,500 for an easyWatch instead of
£9.95," said Haji-Ioannou.
The easyWatch website did not list Portofino Sky or Portofino
Bubbles watches today. It appears that their names may have been
changed to Imperia Sky and Imperia Bubbles. Imperia is the name of
a statue at the harbour of Constance on the German-Swiss
border.
