Recently, Michele Di Pierro, the mastermind behind the Italian company Supreme Italia, was sentenced to prison.
Supreme Italia is not related to the well-known New York street brand Supreme. The latter was founded by British Jame Jebbia in 1994. It started with skateboard culture and is currently only in the United States. It has offline retail stores in , the UK, France and Japan. In 2020, it was acquired by VF Group, the parent company of Vans and The North Face. The Supreme Italia trademark belongs to International Brand Firm Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “IBF”), which was founded by Michele Di Pierro.
IBF is a 7-year-old British holding company responsible for registering the trademarks of Supreme Italia and Supreme Spain. IBF seeks to accumulate trademark registrations in countries such as San Marino, Italy, Indonesia, Singapore and Spain, as well as open stores in various cities in Europe and China.
Supreme Italia’s business started simply. Michele Di Pierro discovered an “opportunity” from Supreme’s tightly controlled distribution chain: the company, valued at US$2.1 billion (approximately RMB 13.561 billion), only sells a limited number of products in stores owned and operated by its brand. products and focused on very careful and measured expansion, opening less than 12 stores since its inception. With consumers around the world passionately seeking (but hard to obtain) Supreme’s popular products, IBF came up with a plan to “essentially hijack the entire brand,” in Supreme’s words.
Michele Di Pierro discovered that although Supreme has been operating for many years, it has not opened stores in many countries. Therefore, he completed the trademark registration of Supreme Italia in San Marino, one of the smallest countries in the world in the eastern part of the Italian peninsula. Supreme Italia became Supreme’s “legal counterfeit product”.
The concept of “Legal fake” exists because different regions may implement different principles for trademark registration applications. Some countries adopt a “first-to-file” system for trademark registration applications. The applicant only needs to prove that he is the first to submit a trademark registration application (not the first to use the trademark) to complete the trademark registration. .
In addition, IBF is also committed to creating its own “legitimate” image in public opinion. In 2019, IBF imitated Supreme and launched red sweatshirts with the Supreme brand name and accessories with the Supreme box logo. The Supreme v. IBF incident has been hotly debated. In reporting on this incident, the mainstream media used the special adjective “Legal fake”.
Silvia Grazioli, a trademark lawyer from Bugnion SpA in Italy, further explained “Legal fake”: “(This refers to) a legal copy of a brand, in which ‘ “Legal” means that the counterfeit brand is a trademark registered in a country where the original trademark has not yet been launched.” But “legal fake” is just a term used by media organizations and has no legal basis in itself.
For many years, Supreme has been filing lawsuits against Michele Di Pierro and Supreme Italia in various European courts. Previously, in January 2018, Supreme’s legal agency Nctm issued a statement that courts in Milan and San Marino, Italy, ordered the confiscation of 120,000 counterfeit goods produced by foreign companies.
Recently, an English court has taken a tougher stance on IBF. Michele Di Pierro and his son Marcello were found guilty of two counts of fraud in a jury trial. Michele Di Pierro was sentenced to eight years in prison and Marcello was sentenced to three years in prison. Circuit Judge Martin Beddoe said in handing down the sentence that the Di Pierro father and son “hijacked Supreme’s identity and plagiarized it in every aspect” and that their actions were “brazen,” “disrespectful” and “dishonest.” In addition, the court also required IBF to pay Supreme 7.5 million pounds (approximately RMB 67.3 million) in monetary compensation. Given that there is currently only £300 left in the IBF London account, it is doubtful whether compensation can be implemented.
Neither Di Pierro nor his son attended the court hearing. According to Bloomberg, the arrest warrant will be reissued after the sentencing. After the trial, Michele Di Pierro issued a statement saying Supreme’s legal attacks against him, his son and the IBF constituted a “very serious and unreasonable attack” involving “absurd, baseless and defamatory claims of counterfeit registered trademarks”. accusation”.
Lawyer Michele Di Pierro said that the two parties are negotiating and discussing IBF’s commercial activities in other countries, including trademark registration. IBF currently has trademark registrations in Italy, Spain, San Marino and Tunisia. Previously, Supreme had successfully prevented IBF’s trademarks registered in Singapore, Spain and Israel from taking effect.
Supreme Italia also launched two stores in China earlier to openly sell products bearing the Supreme trademark. In June 2019, the China Trademark Office revoked Supreme Italia’s ownership of two registered trademarks in China.
Supreme Italia entered the attention of the Chinese public in December 2018, when Samsung China held a launch conference for its new mobile phone Galaxy A8s. During this period, Samsung announced that it would launch a joint cooperation with the well-known fashion brand “Supreme”, saying that this was”Supreme” made its first official public appearance in China. After it was discovered that the “Supreme” they were cooperating with was actually Supreme Italia, Samsung announced the termination of this “unexpected” cooperation. </p
