Remember, you first read the story hear a month ago https://www.adultfyi.com/read.aspx?ID=5812 when we interviewed Chanel [Chanelle] Richards about her tussle with Chanel perfume. Now the rest of the world is getting it.
Toronto- A Toronto escort who calls herself Chanelle is being sued by Chanel, the international perfume and fashion giant and its Canadian subsidiary, for infringement of its trademarks.
“To me, this is frivolous,” said Chanelle, a 39-year-old who asked that her real name not be used. She received the statement of claim yesterday morning and said she couldn’t believe it as she read through the legal documents filed by the perfume giant in Federal Court in Montreal.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” she said. She has 30 days to file a statement of defence and plans to do so.
“I’m going to fight it,” she said during a telephone interview.
The dispute between the escort and the perfume company seems to centre on the use of the website address http://www.sexychanel.com, which is registered to the Toronto woman. On the site, Chanelle is leaning on a perfume bottle, which the lawsuit alleges infringes on its design trademark. The site offers Chanelle’s unspecified services for up to $10,000 for 24 hours, as well as a gourmet dinner-date package.
Chanelle said that, after being contacted by the company eight months ago, she changed the website spelling to http://www.sexychanelle.com. The company approved the changes of the domain name on Feb. 17, in an e-mail to her, she said. As for the offending perfume bottle, she said she changed the shape of it when the company first contacted her. Now, she said she’s not sure why she’s being sued.
“I want to go public with this to get Chanel to drop this lawsuit and to see how frivolous it is,” she said. “How could a billion-dollar company be asking to see my profits because they feel my leaning on a perfume bottle has damaged their reputation?
“I’m not selling perfume. I can understand a company going after another company for selling handbags. But I’m not selling a product. It’s me. I’m the product.”
The earlier version of the website address still works.
In its statement of claim, Chanel claims the Toronto woman is “dealing in personal escort services under trademarks or trade names including a domain name identical to, or confusingly similar with, some of the plaintiff Chanel S. de R.L.’s registered trademarks.”
The documents also maintain that the defendant “has offered for sale a domain name, namely http://www.sexychanel.com, which comprises the trademark Chanel.” And that “the defendant’s activities are causing and are likely to cause serious harm to the plaintiffs.”
The allegations have not been proven in court.
Chanel says in the documents that it wants the court to place a permanent injunction on the defendant, restraining her from “offering for sale, selling, advertising and promoting services, including the ownership and use of the domain name http://www.sexychanel.com, in association with any of the Chanel registered trademarks.”
It wants Chanelle to be restrained from “using or owning a domain name as an address or otherwise comprising any of the Chanel registered trademarks or any trademark likely to be confusingly therewith, including `Channel,’ `Shanel,’ `Channelle’ or `Chanelle.’
It is asking the court to stop the defendant “from depreciating the value of the goodwill” attached to the name.
And most importantly, it wants the courts to order the defendant to give up her rights to the domain name http://www.sexychanel.com and transfer them to the fashion and perfume house. The Toronto woman had offered to sell her domain name to the company for $250,000 (U.S.).
A lawyer with Ogilvy Renault, the Montreal firm representing Chanel in this matter, would not talk about the case, other than to say: “I cannot speak to you because it’s a matter under litigation. The document speaks for itself.”