Source: El País

An Australian court ruled last Thursday that pop superstar Katy Perry infringed a trademark of the fashion designer Katie Jane Taylor, who sells her products locally using a mark whose name is her birth name, Katie Perry.

The businesswoman filed a lawsuit in 2019 against the singer for selling clothing under her name to Australian customers during her tours in the country. In light of this, the federal judge Brigitte Markovic ruled that Katy Perry’s company, Kitty Purry, infringed the trademark of Katie Taylor –which is mainly applied to commercialization of clothing online– when promoting the singer’s products on social media posts, according to a court’s document publicated on April 25.

“This is a story of two women, two teenage dreams and one name,” Markovic stated in the lawsuit. The financial compensation for damages is still pending and will be determined in the near future.

The American singer did not imagine, when she chose her stage name, that she would end up facing a court battle for sounding too much like the founder of a small Australian fashion store, nor did she expect to lose the lawsuit, but she did.

Katie Taylor, who filed the lawsuit in 2019, alleged that the singer ignored her trademark and sold her clothing to Australian customers during her 2014 and 2018 tour in Australia. It’s useful to mention that it was on 2008 when Taylor registered the Katie Perry trademark in Australia, who claims that she was unaware of the U.S. singer’s existence at that time.

Taylor called the verdict “a David versus Goliath victory” for small businesses. “Not only did I fight against myself, but I fought for Australian small businesses, many of them started by women, who may find themselves up against foreign entities that have far more financial power than we do,” she said in a blog post on her online store.

This victory represents a win for small businesses. “One of the reasons I wanted to take on this great challenge was to teach my two children that in the face of adversity and someone who intimidates you, you have to stand up for what you really believe in. We won!” the designer concludes in a video uploaded to her social networks.