Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Boca store sold fakes, Cartier says
LOVE bracelet went for $5,000
Luxury watch and jewelry maker Cartier is accusing a longtime Boca Raton jeweler of selling counterfeit versions of its iconic LOVE bracelet for as much as $5,000 each.
Iris & Eileen’s Fine Jewelry Inc., founded in 1996 as Eileen’s Fine Jewelry, was named as a defendant in a federal counterfeiting suit filed in U.S. District Court in Fort Lauderdale on July 12 by Cartier International AG and Cartier, a division of Richemont North America Inc.
The store is located within a cluster of jewelry stores in a strip mall at 8221 Glades Road called International Jewelers Exchange. The store’s principals are identified by the state Division of Corporations as Iris Seckendorf and Eileen Weinstein. The store was closed on Monday. A call to the store’s phone number was greeted with a recording stating the operators were on vacation and would return today.
Designed for Cartier by Aldo Cipullo in 1969, “the LOVE bracelet has adorned the wrists of many famous celebrities, including 1970s couples such as Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, Nancy and Frank Sinatra, Cary Grant and Dyan Cannon, and Ali MacGraw and Steve McQueen. Today, the LOVE bracelet continues to be favored by celebrities such as Kylie Jenner.”
The suit says a Cartier agent visited the jewelry store in November 2017 and “observed bracelets bearing imitations of the LOVE Trade Dress” — the trademarked design of the product — “and the LOVE [trademarks].” Some of the bracelets also featured the Cartier trademark, the suit said, and were offered for
sale for amounts ranging from $3,500 to $5,000.
Cartier’s website features 36 models of its LOVE bracelet with the familiar screw head design, ranging in price from $4,050 for a small model made of 18k yellow gold to $56,000 for a white gold model encrusted with 216 diamonds totaling 3.16 carats.
The suit said Cartier’s agent returned to Iris & Eileen’s Fine Jewelry in June and asked about bracelets bearing diamonds. The agent “was presented with two white gold bracelets bearing imitations of the LOVE [trademarks] and LOVE Trade Dress; one of the bracelets also featured the Cartier mark.”
The agent purchased an imitation LOVE bracelet for $2,950, the suit said. It also asserted that the store knew that the products are “unlawful imitations of Cartier’s jewelry products and it advertises them as such.
“In fact, Defendant informed Cartier’s agent that the bracelets were good copies and that a real Cartier bracelet would sell for $13,000 to $14,000.”
The suit also accuses the store of “falsely designating the origin of its products,” in violation of federal trade law.
Reached by phone Monday, Mark Stein, of Mark Stein Law in Aventura, said the suit’s counterfeiting claim charges that the company is selling the bracelets as known fakes, while a second claim, that it engaged in unfair competition by selling products “likely to cause confusion, cause mistake and/or deceive” buyers about its origin covers the possibility that some buyers bought the bracelets thinking they were authentic Cartier products.
“Whether or not they’re selling as real Cartier and not telling people, I don’t know,” he said.
The suit says Cartier thinks the store has sold the imitations to customers other than Cartier’s agent.
The suit seeks to stop the store from selling counterfeit copies of its products, plus damages of up to $2 million “per counterfeit mark per type of goods sold, offered for sale, or distributed,” plus punitive damages and legal costs.
“One of Cartier’s most well-known and sought-after jewelry lines is known as the LOVE collection, which consists of a wide variety of jewelry products, each with the distinctive appearance of a flat metal band in white gold, yellow gold, or pink gold punctuated by simulated screw head designs and/or diamonds,” the suit states.
The company has “extensively advertised and promoted the products manufactured, sold, and offered for sale under the LOVE [trademarks] both to the trade and to the public,” according to the suit. The LOVE trademarks “immediately indicate Cartier as the exclusive source of products to which they are affixed, and signify goodwill of incalculable value.”
Cartier’s LOVE products, the suit states, “are of the highest quality and are subject to exacting quality control standards.” It adds the company “takes pains to ensure the quality of its products by monitoring their production and distribution.”
“Cartier consistently protects its intellectual property rights and always has,” Stein said. Trademarks are among the most valuable assets of any company, and companies that fail their legal obligations to protect them risk losing them if they fall into common, unchallenged use, he said.
Failing to protect trademarks “also allows third parties to use the goodwill you’ve developed,” Stein said. “It defeats the purpose of developing that goodwill.”