Counterfeiters were selling David Beckham’s designer clothing online, but Beckham mounted a suit and won a £240 million judgment against them.
Beckham, director of DB Ventures, has been pursuing 150 online vendors for £1.58 billion worth of merchandise. On marketplaces such as Etsy, Amazon, and eBay, con artists, mostly from Asian businesses, were peddling counterfeit items.
Designer apparel, shoes, fragrances, hair and body care goods, posters, footballs, video games, spectacles, jewelry, and timepieces were among the items on display. According to the lawsuit, this transaction is seriously damaging to DBV’s reputation and its ability to remain in business.
It took Beckham over three months before he finally started the legal process to win the case. The court has now made the interim injunction and asset freeze awarded to Beckham permanent. The court agreed with DB Venture’s request for a default sentence and awarded £8,000 to each of the 44 defendants for their infringements. The £240 million that Beckham’s team had requested from all fifteen companies added up to a much smaller sum than the £352,000 that was ultimately awarded.
DB Ventures retained the trademark experts Sladkus Law Group to halt the illegal transactions. The firm supposedly handed a £10 million salary to a valued “mystery employee” in 2022, but the reports merely showed that the highest-paid director received considerable compensation.
In 2021, American supermarket Walmart was sued by Kanye West, who claimed that Walmart sold imitations of his Yeezy foam sneakers. According to the complaint, the wealthy rapper will lose “hundreds of millions of dollars” in sales if Walmart’s knockoffs of Foam Runners are successfully passed off as the real thing.
Upon its release in June 2020, the authentic Yeezy Foam Runners, which cost £60, were an instant hit. According to Walmart spokespersons, the company does not offer the product; third-party marketplace vendors sell it.
