San Francisco, Sept. 26 - Golden State Vintners, Inc. (GSV), a subsidiary of The Wine Group LLC (TWG), the world's third largest producer of wine by volume and the owner of such well-known brands as Franzia, Concannon, Glen Ellen, and Gray Fox, announces that the Svea Court of Appeal in Stockholm, Sweden has upheld the judgment of the Stockholm City Court on 20 December 2006 against V&S Vin & Sprit AB (V&S), ordering the cancellation of V&S' registration of the Golden Gate trademark in Sweden and awarding damages to GSV in an amount to be determined for breach of contract regarding the Golden Gate brand.
The Court of Appeal sided with GSV, and confirmed the findings of the City Court that (1) V&S infringed GSV's trademark rights by falsely claiming that V&S secured permission from GSV to use GSV's Golden Gate mark on V&S' labels for the Golden Gate brand; and, (2) V&S breached a license agreement with GSV by registering the trademark Golden Gate in Sweden without GSV's permission, and selling wine under the trademark Golden Gate in Sweden from suppliers other than GSV.
Although GSV is extremely pleased with the Court of Appeal's ruling, GSV continues to suffer from V&S' deceptive marketing practices, and believes that V&S' actions of merely removing GSV's word mark from its labels, while continuing to use a bridge image so closely associated with the word mark, violates the Swedish Marketing Act. GSV believes that V&S' actions entail deception regarding the commercial origin and quality of wine currently sold to Swedish consumers under the Golden Gate image. GSV plans to take further legal action against V&S under the Marketing Act for the harm that it continues to suffer.
"Once again the Swedish Court has ruled that TWG is the rightful owner of the Golden Gate trademark, and that V&S breached its license agreement by secretly registering the trademark behind a fabricated story of self-invention," stated Ulrike Backhaus-Mueller, Managing Director of TWG-Europe. Further, Ms. Backhaus-Mueller notes, "The Courts have affirmed our belief that V&S has sold counterfeit goods under the once revered Golden Gate brand name in Sweden. Even after December's City Court ruling, V&S continued to sell wine under the Golden Gate trade dress by simply removing the word mark despite well-documented consumer confusion over the wine's authenticity. V&S has now so tarnished the reputation and image of the Golden Gate brand that the damages are approaching 235 million kronor, which was the enterprise value of the brand in Sweden based on its 2005 retail sales. With the affirmation of the Court of Appeal in hand, we call upon Systembolaget to immediately remove all deceptive and infringing Golden Gate wines, including those bearing only the image of the Golden Gate bridge, from their shelves and replace them with authentic wines."
David B. Kent, Chief Executive Officer of TWG, was quick to add, "I am astounded that V&S would take such a laissez faire attitude towards the international protection of trademarks and by their wrongful support of such a low standard for consumer confusion regarding trade dress. Their actions may regrettably make it more difficult to defend their own ABSOLUT brand from similar knock-off and counterfeit products in the future. We have been fighting a rash of counterfeits of our leading brand, Franzia, in China for the past two years, but I never imagined we would be fighting this battle in Sweden. We are pleased that the court system in Sweden has carefully considered V&S' actions and has once again affirmed our rights."