Singer Katy Perry has won her long-running trademark feud with a Sydney designer after an earlier Federal Court decision was overturned on appeal on Friday. Sydney woman Katie Jane Taylor, who runs the Katie Perry label, sued the I Kissed A Girl singer in the Federal Court over the sale of clothes in Australia, claiming trademark infringement. In April last year, Ms Taylor had a partial victory, with the court finding Ms Perry committed trademark infringements in social media posts promoting her Prismatic Tour in 2013 and 2014.
However the singer appealed to the Full Bench of the Federal Court, which on Friday found “Ms Taylor’s trade mark was not validly registered” and ordered that the registration of the designer’s traemark be cancelled. “This case is an unfortunate one in the sense that two enterprising women in different countries each adopted their name as a trade mark at a time that each was unaware of the existence of the other,” Justices David Yates, Stephen Burley and Helen Rofe said in their judgment. “Both women put blood, sweat and tears into developing their businesses.
One became an internationally famous entertainer in the music industry, the other, a small Australian fashion designer.” The court heard that Ms Taylor became aware of Ms Perry in July 2008 when she heard one of her songs. And Ms Taylor argued, she had already spent significant money and time on establishing her brand.
The court found that “it was after that awareness” in Sept.
