How to solve this?

[chrisbarbrine]

I have a site selling fake watches, I just received an email from [email protected]. The content as below:


Dear Madam, Dear Sir,

The Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry FH (hereafter: the FH), based at 6, Rue d'Argent, CH-2501 Bienne (Switzerland) is the main organisation for the sector, with approximately 500 member companies, representing 90% of Swiss watch producers. Based on general and ad hoc mandates, the Federation has the authority to take action in order to defend the rights of its members.

It has come to the FH's attention that your company operates an illegal website located at http://www.xxx.com. By this, your company is infringing our members' trademarks among other infringed trademarks and according to our information and belief is selling counterfeit products using said trademark(s). Unlawful use of the mark(s) occurs throughout the website, including unauthorised use of protected trademark(s) to promote sales of look-a-like and/or counterfeit watches.

In the present case we are acting on behalf of the following brands: Audemars Piguet; Blancpain; Breitling; Bulgari; Hublot; Omega; Oris; Patek Philippe; Richard Mille; Tag Heuer; Zenith . The website http://www.xxx.com infringes these trademarks, protected in Switzerland, EU, USA, China, Hong Kong, Russian, etc. as well by International registrations.

Your company is undoubtedly aware that the sale and promotion of counterfeits, either offline or online, infringes the owners' intellectual property rights.

Evidence of abuse: this website offers fake watches for sale.

This website not only infringes our members' trademarks by causing unacceptable harm to brand owners, but also abuses consumers.

As content provider and website operator, we should consider you as liable for the illegal content of http://www.xxx.com.

You must cease and desist all promotion and/or marketing of counterfeit products on this domain name. You are hereby put on notice that the mentioned trademarks and the FH will be monitoring your use of http://www.xxx.com in this regard.

We hope that this issue will be resolved in order to avoid the need for any further legal remedies. Should you have any other question, please contact us to settle this matter.

Yours faithfully,

Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry FH
CH-2501 Bienne
[email protected]
Tel +41 32 328 08 28; Fax +41 32 328 08 8

Someone said their next step is to block my site, is that true? How to solve?

 

[Steptoe]

They will probably send a C&D to your host, and possibly to your domain registrar if your domain contains trademarks. Depending on how BH-friendly your host is they may just ignore the C&D.

 

[chrisbarbrine]

They will probably send a C&D to your host, and possibly to your domain registrar if your domain contains trademarks. Depending on how BH-friendly your host is they may just ignore the C&D.

My domain will be blocked, right?

 

[Steptoe]

Someone said their next step is to block my site, is that true? How to solve?

Who does this 'someone' say is going to block your site/domain? Google? The domain registrar?
I think the best they can do is send DMCA requests to Google, which may result in your pages being removed from the index if they contain copyrighted material. And as I mentioned before, a domain registrar may take down a domain if the domain name itself contains a trademarked word.

 

[chrisbarbrine]

Who does this 'someone' say is going to block your site/domain? Google? The domain registrar?
I think the best they can do is send DMCA requests to Google, which may result in your pages being removed from the index if they contain copyrighted material. And as I mentioned before, a domain registrar may take down a domain if the domain name itself contains a trademarked word.

I worked in a watch company before, they built many websites to sell fake watches, some of their domain names do not contain copyrighted brand name, but in the end their domain names were eventually reclaimed months later after receiving this email message.

 

[NirvanaWolf]

What happens next will also depend on which country you're from. Blocking your domain is one thing, they can file a criminal case against you, depending on your location. If it's a third world country, then you may be safe from any legal action but it depends on how motivated are they to take you down.