Leading fashion brand gets schooled on what makes a distinctive brandmark

Premium fashion brands spend a fortune protecting their brands from fakes and for good reason. The Gucci brand is Italy’s most valuable brand and is estimated to be $US 37.9 billion by BrandZ.

Last week the internet was blowing up with an IP battle between Gucci and local brand, Cuggi.

The fact that a big brand was fighting to protect its trademark is nothing new. The reason this got so much attention is that the little guy won.

 

In 2020, Osaka-based entrepreneur, Nobuaki Kurokawa, registered a trademark for ‘Cuggi’. In what is apparently a brand parody, the Cuggi brandmark is almost visually identical to Gucci. The only difference is the ‘G’ is changed to a ‘C’ and the ‘I’ to an ‘L’.

Images circulating on social media also show t-shirts being sold with what ‘a logo’ carefully obscured and redacted with paint.

Parody or not, Gucci is not amused. In fact, they’re currently licking their wounds after their court battle failed to shut down Cuggi.

Gucci’s lawyers filed an infringement on their trademark with Japan’s Patent Office. They argued that Cuggi had “malicious intent to free-ride on the goodwill and reputation” of its brand and was “identical with, or similar to, a trademark which is well known among consumers in Japan or abroad”.

The Patent Office dismissed the claim and sided with Cuggi. Apparently, they couldn’t see any resemblances between the two logos “from visual, phonetic, and conceptual points of view”, and don’t believe consumers were likely to confuse the two brands.

This isn’t the end of the story as Gucci will likely appeal the decision.

Since the verdict, several IP lawyers have commented that the Gucci brandmark is effectively just a generic font. When used without the ‘GG’ icon, the Gucci brandmark doesn’t have any distinguishing features that make it unique.

This may be a wake-up call for other brands. If your brandmark isn’t truly distinctive, it may be time to review it.

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Michael Hughes

Michael is Managing Partner and Strategy Director at Truly Deeply. His deep expertise is in unlocking the strategic power of your brand to create a differentiated, compelling and authentic brand proposition that will engage all your audiences and drive your business growth. Michael has extensive experience working with leading Australian and International organisations across just about every sector.

Images; courtesy of Cuggi and Julien Tondu