ONE flower is too much like another, and so watch retailer City Chain will have to stop selling a design which resembles too closely the brand motif of a luxury goods company.

Louis Vuitton (LV) yesterday won a High Court judgment against the Hong Kong-based chain for infringing on its trademark, a flower with four pointed petals.

City Chain will have to hand over the offending watches, sold under housebrand Solvil, to LV within 14 days, ruled Justice Tay Yong Kwang.

He also rejected an application by the retail chain to dismiss separate criminal charges brought by LV.

No reasons were given for the court's ruling.

In a press statement yesterday, City Chain's regional operations controller Kenny Chong said it was 'disappointed with the court's decision and looks forward to receiving its reasons'.

'City Chain will consult with its lawyers with a view to filing an appeal,' said the statement.

Yesterday's judgment was a victory for LV in a second country against City Chain over the watches, which were also sold in China and Malaysia.

Its claim was upheld in a Guangdong court a few months ago, and it has a suit pending in Malaysia.

LV watches were launched in 2002, and have been sold here since 2004. They are priced between $4,000 and $65,000.

Sales of the watches accrued $1.7 million to $1.9 million annually between 2005 and 2007.

The Solvil watches were launched in November 2006 and cost $149.

City Chain is the watch retailing arm of Hong Kong-listed company Stelux Holdings International, with stores in Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Macau and China. It had 39 outlets in Singapore last year.

Represented by Mr Wong Siew Hong, LV argued that City Chain's use of a similar, if not identical, mark on its watches would create confusion among consumers.

Mr Wong contended that City Chain had in fact deliberately set out to copy LV's designs to appeal to the big group of young consumers who aspire to own LV products but may not have the means to do so.

The lawyer noted that City Chain had not offered any evidence on how it had come about the design. It withheld the identity of the designers and did not call any of them to testify.

While the two companies are not competitors, selling lookalike watches in the mass market would damage LV's image of exclusivity, causing LV's existing customers to turn away, said Mr Wong.

City Chain, represented by Senior Counsel Tan Tee Jim and Mr Christopher de Souza, argued that the design was not used as a trademark to indicate the origin of the watches but merely as a decorative element.

It disagreed that the marks on its Solvil watches were identical or even similar to LV's registered marks.

Consumers were not likely to be confused, given the great disparity in prices. In any case, City Chain and LV had very different markets.

This article was first published in The Straits Times on Sep 26, 2008.