Suit: Jeweler sold phony bracelets
Cartier demands Iris & Eileen’s return profits and also pay punitive damages and legal costs.
BOCA RATON — Cartier calls its bracelet collection “Love.” But the 170-year-old jeweler is showing anything but love to a suburban Boca Raton retailer it says is selling counterfeit bracelets.
Cartier this month filed a federal lawsuit against Iris & Eileen’s Fine Jewelry, which operates at the International Jewelers Exchange, a co-op for independent jewel retailers at Glades Road and Florida’s Turnpike.
The suit, filed July 12, demands Iris & Eileen’s give Cartier all its profits from the bracelets as well as triple-damages, or up to $2 million per “counterfeit mark,” at Cartier’s option. It also calls for punitive damages and legal costs.
The luxury jeweler also asks the court to block the retailer from either producing or selling any of the allegedly fake bracelets.
The shop also would, within 30 days, surrender to Cartier any such bracelets and materials used to create them, as well as recall any bracelets from re-sellers.
The lawsuit does not say how many bracelets Cartier believes Iri s & Eileen’s has sold. As of last Tuesday, the court docket showed no hearings scheduled on the case.
Iris & Eileen’s owner Eileen Weinstein told The Palm Beach Post on Tuesday that she’d just returned from out of town and “we didn’t know anything about it (the suit) until this morning” and so did not want to comment.
“All I can tell you is it was gold. They were real,” she said. “I didn’t know it was fraudulent, when I got it, that it was anything fraudulent.”
The suit says the jewel er, founded in France in 1847 and now based in Switzerland, spends millions of dollars a year “to advertise and promote the Cartier mark and the products sold thereunder.” It says the one-word “Cartier” script logo is protected by four
separate U.S. trademarks dating to 1945.
Among i t s “most well - k n o w n a n d s o u g h t - a f - ter jewelry lines,” the suit said, is the LOVE collection, launched in 1969. It’s noted mostly for its bracelet of a flat metal band in white, yellow or pink gold with designs of either a “screw head” — a line in a circle approximating the head of a screw — or diamonds.
Cartier said it’s adorned the wrists of personalities from Elizabeth Taylor to Kylie Jenner and has its own four U.S. trademarks.
T h e s u i t a l l e ge s I r i s & Eileen’s counterfeited bracelets, or at least sold fakes, some even bearing the “Cartier” script.
In November 2017, it said, a Cartier’s representative visited the Iris & Eileen’s booth and saw bracelets on sale for $3,500 to $5,000.
It says the agent returned in June and bought a bracelet for $2,950. The complaint includes color photos of that item as well as a real Cartier.
At the time, the suit says, a person at the counter, whom it does not name, told the agent “the bracelets were good copies and that a real Cartier bracelet would sell for $13,000 to $14,000.”
Cartier’s online page offers 42 variations of the bracelet, ranging in price from $1,200 to $56,000.
Miami lawyer Mark Stein and New York lawyers John Margiotta and Emily Weiss, all of whom represent Cartier, did not return calls Tuesday. Cartier’s press office did not respond to an email.