RICHARD SEEBORG, District Judge.
Plaintiff, Chanel, Inc. ("Plaintiff" or "Chanel"), moves for entry of a preliminary injunction against Defendants, The Partnerships or Unincorporated Associations Identified on Schedule "A" hereto and Does 1-100 (the "Defendants"), pursuant to 15 U.S.C. § 1116 and Fed. R. Civ. P. 65 for alleged violations of the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. §§ 1114, and 1125(a).
For reasons set forth herein, Plaintiff's Application for Preliminary Injunction is GRANTED.
Chanel alleges in the Complaint that it is the owner of all rights in and to various federally registered trademarks (the "Chanel Marks"). Chanel alleges that the Defendants are promoting, advertising, distributing, offering for sale and selling counterfeit and infringing products, including scarves, telephone cases, protective covers for portable electronic devices (including cell phones), and costume jewelry (including necklaces and earrings) (the "Defendants' Goods"), bearing designations that are identical or virtually identical to the Chanel Marks, through commercial e-stores identified on
Chanel alleges that Defendants have PayPal accounts, operated by PayPal, Inc. ("PayPal") in which to process payment for sale of the Defendants' Goods.
On June 14, 2013, the Court issued an Order Granting Plaintiff's Ex Parte Application for a Temporary Restraining Order and temporarily restrained the Defendants from infringing the Chanel Marks at issue as well as restrained certain of the Defendants' assets (e-docket #18). Pursuant to the Court's June 14, 2013 Order, Plaintiff provided each Defendant with notice and copies of the Court's June 14, 2013 Order and Plaintiff's Ex Parte Application for Entry of a Temporary Restraining Order and Preliminary Injunction, electronically via the means authorized by the Court's June 14, 2013 Order (e-docket #20-22).
Plaintiff has sufficiently shown that it is likely to succeed on the merits of its claims, that it is likely to suffer irreparable harm in the absence of preliminary relief, that the balance of harm tilts in Plaintiff's favor, and that the preliminary relief is in the public interest.
Upon review of Plaintiff's Complaint, Application for Preliminary Injunction and supporting evidentiary submissions, it is hereby
(1) Each Defendant, its officers, directors, employees, agents, subsidiaries, distributors, and all persons in active concert or participation with any Defendant having notice of this Order are hereby restrained and enjoined:
(2) Each Defendant, its officers, directors, employees, agents, subsidiaries, distributors, and all persons in active concert or participation with any Defendant having notice of this Preliminary Injunction shall immediately discontinue, until further Order of this Court, the use of the Chanel Marks or any confusingly similar trademarks, on or in connection with all Internet websites, domain name, and/or e-store businesses owned and operated, or controlled by them including the Internet websites and commercial e-stores operating under the Subject E-Store Names;
(3) Each Defendant, its officers, directors, employees, agents, subsidiaries, distributors, and all persons in active concert or participation with any Defendant having notice of this Preliminary Injunction shall immediately discontinue, until further Order of this Court, the use of the Chanel Marks, or any confusingly similar trademarks within domain name extensions, metatags or other markers within website source code, from use on any webpage (including as the title of any web page), any advertising links to other websites, from search engines' databases or cache memory, and any other form of use of such terms which is visible to a computer user or serves to direct computer searches to websites registered by, owned, or operated by each Defendant, including the Internet websites operating under the domain names used and controlled by Defendants 3 and 5 (i.e., the Subject Domain Names);
(4) Each Defendant shall not transfer ownership of the Subject Domain Names during the pendency of this Action, or until further Order of the Court;
(5) The domain name Registrars for the Subject Domain Names are directed, to the extent not already done, to transfer to Plaintiff's counsel, for deposit with this Court, domain name certificates for the Subject Domain Names;
(6) The domain name Registrars for the Subject Domain Names shall immediately, to the extent not already done, assist in changing the Registrar of record for the Subject Domain Names, excepting any such domain names which such Registrars have been notified in writing by Plaintiff have been or will be dismissed from this action, to a holding account with a Registrar of Plaintiff's choosing (the "New Registrar"). To the extent the Registrars do not assist in changing the Registrars of Record for the domains under their respective control within one (1) business day of receipt of this Order and instructions on the change of the Registrars of Record, the top-level domain (TLD) Registries (or their administrators) for the Subject Domain Names, within five (5) business days of receipt of this Order, shall, change or assist in changing, the Registrar of record for the Subject Domain Names, excepting any such domain names which such Registries have been notified in writing by Plaintiff have been or will be dismissed from this action, to a holding account with the New Registrar. As a matter of law, this Order shall no longer apply to any Defendant or associated domain name dismissed from this action. Upon the change of the Registrar of record for the Subject Domain Names, the New Registrar will maintain access to the Subject Domain Names in trust for the Court during the pendency of this action. Additionally, the New Registrar shall immediately institute a temporary 302 domain name redirection which will automatically redirect any visitor to the Subject Domain Names to the following Uniform Resource Locator ("URL")
(7) Upon Plaintiff's request, the privacy protection service for any Subject Domain Names for which the Registrant uses such privacy protection service to conceal the Registrant's identify and contact information are ordered, to the extent not already done, to disclose to Plaintiff the true identities and contact information of those Registrants;
(8) Plaintiff may enter, and continue to enter, the Subject Domain Names into Google's Webmaster Tools and cancel any redirection of the domains that have been entered there by the Defendants which redirect traffic to the counterfeit operations to a new domain name or website and thereby evade the provisions of this Order;
(9) Each Defendant shall preserve, and continue to preserve, copies of all their computer files relating to the use of any of the Subject Domain Names and E-Stores and shall take all steps necessary to retrieve computer files relating to the use of the Subject Domain Names and E-Stores that may have been deleted before the entry of this Order;
(10) Upon receipt of notice of this Order, PayPal and its related companies and affiliates shall immediately, to the extent not already done, freeze all funds, as opposed to ongoing account activity, in or which hereafter are transmitted into the PayPal accounts related to the PayPal account recipients:
as well as all funds in or which are transmitted into:
(11) PayPal shall also immediately, to the extent not already done, divert to a holding account for the trust of the Court all funds in all PayPal accounts related to the PayPal account recipients:
and any other related accounts of the same customer(s) as well as any other accounts which transfer funds into the same financial institution account(s) as any of the other PayPal accounts subject to this Order;
(12) PayPal shall further, to the extent not already done, within five days of receiving this Order, provide Plaintiff's counsel with all data which details
(13) Plaintiff shall maintain its bond in the amount of Ten-Thousand Dollars and Zero Cents ($10,000.00), as payment of damages to which the Defendants may be entitled for a wrongful injunction or restraint, during the pendency of this action, or until further Order of the Court;
(14) This Preliminary Injunction shall remain in effect during the pendency of this action, or until such further date as set by the Court or stipulated to by the parties;
(15) This Preliminary Injunction shall apply to the Subject Domain Names and any other domain names properly brought to the Court's attention and verified by sworn affidavit which verifies such new domain names are being used by Defendants for the purpose of counterfeiting the Chanel Marks at issue in this action and/or unfairly competing with Chanel in connection with search engine results pages.