Gucci America, Inc. v. Guess?, Inc.

Gucci America, Inc. (Gucci) (plaintiff) was a global fashion company with a reputation as one of the largest luxury-product brands in the world. Guess?, Inc. (Guess) (defendant), an international competitor, created an entire product line that imitated nonfunctional elements of Gucci’s product design, or trade dress. Gucci’s Diamond Motif trade dress included a trademarked repeating “GG” diamond-shaped pattern, with two inverted Gs in each corner, in brown and beige colors. Guess’s trademarked Quattro G Pattern depicted repeating squares, rather than diamonds, with Gs in the corners. Guess provided fabric with the Quattro G Pattern to handbag makers who created a two-tone woven canvas design in brown and beige. Individuals associated with Guess and its licensees commented in writing about the similarity of the fabric’s Quattro G Pattern to Gucci’s Diamond Motif pattern. Guess continued to produce handbags, shoes, and other products using this fabric design. Gucci brought suit against Guess for trade-dress infringement in violation of the Lanham Trade-Mark Act. Gucci claimed that the similarity of the Quattro G Pattern to the distinctive Diamond Motif nonfunctional-design elements was likely to cause post-sale confusion among observers of the products. The district court conducted a bench trial, and the parties submitted posttrial proposed findings and conclusions.