Carter-Ruck has secured victory for US golf manufacturer, SuperStroke, in its trademark and passing off claim against an English golf retailer.
The case involved the importation and sale in the UK of thousands of counterfeit SuperStroke putter grips produced in a Chinese factory. Whilst the counterfeits were, on first view, convincing replicas, the quality of materials used and production quality were significantly inferior to the genuine product. It was also discovered that colour combinations had been used which were not part of the official SuperStroke product line. Once SuperStroke and its official UK distributor, Brand Fusion, discovered that Superstroke’s intellectual property rights had been infringed, SuperStroke took immediate and decisive action. Carter-Ruck issued proceedings in the High Court on SuperStroke’s behalf, and, shortly afterwards, secured a favourable settlement of the claim.
The settlement involves the payment of damages to SuperStroke together with its legal costs, delivery up of the counterfeit items in the retailer’s possession and a large scale remediation exercise to replace counterfeit grips bought by customers of the retailer with genuine grips.
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SuperStroke was represented by Carter-Ruck.
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