Case fileReal
Sanrio (rights holder) — Hello Kitty “genuine fabric, still infringing” case
A neat trademark puzzle: real Hello Kitty fabric, but turning it into masks made the finished goods infringing.
State prosecution (Sanrio as trademark owner),
Plaintiff,
v.
A seller of Hello Kitty fabric masks,
Defendant.
Docket No.99年度審智易字第43號
CourtKaohsiung District Court
Filed2009
StatusDecided
The record
- Court
- Kaohsiung District Court
- Jurisdiction
- Taiwan
- Docket No.
- 99年度審智易字第43號
- Filed
- 2009
- Resolved
- 2010
- Sanrio’s role
- Rights-holder
- Type
- Counterfeiting
- Claims
- Trademark Act — unauthorized use on processed goods
- Counsel — plaintiff/petitioner
- not public
- Counsel — Sanrio side
- not public
What happened
A neat trademark puzzle: real Hello Kitty fabric, but turning it into masks made the finished goods infringing.
Outcome
Guilty; a lenient two-month sentence. The defendant bought genuine licensed Hello Kitty fabric in Japan and sewed it into masks; the court held the processing destroyed the goods’ genuine status, defeating an exhaustion / parallel-import defense.
The legal nuance
The exhaustion doctrine protects reselling the genuine article, not remaking it into something new.
Sources of record