The Coty v Amazon case, which we've previously
written about, reached its conclusion recently. The judgment went
in Amazon's favour,
as so much seems to be at the moment.
To recap, Coty, who owns the trade mark Davidoff, discovered
that infringing Davidoff Hot Water perfumes were available on
Amazon. Coty sued Amazon (there were, in fact, two separate Amazon
companies involved) for trade mark infringement in Germany, but was
unsuccessful. The German court referred the matter to Europe's
highest court, the Court of Justice of the European Union
("CJEU").
Image credit.
The awkward question for consideration by the the CJEU was: is a
person who stores goods infringing trade mark rights on behalf of a
third party without having knowledge of the infringement of the
trade mark rights, to be regarded as possessing those goods for the
purpose of offering them for sale or putting them on the market
within the meaning of those provisions if he himself does
