Burberry Earns $100 Million In Counterfeiting Lawsuit

What lesson did we learn this week, class? Don't rip off Burberry.

Burberry was awarded $100 million in damages this week as Manhattan Federal court laid down the law on an extensive counterfeiting network. According to Women's Wear Daily, a slew of Chinese websites using the Burberry name and selling fake Burberry goods (yes, people are still buying fake bags... )have been found guilty of trademark infringement.

This is certainly not the first time the British brand has taken counterfeiters to task. In 2010, Burberry filed a lawsuit against TJ Maxx, Marshalls and HomeGoods for selling fake Burberry products.

But the recent suit has more intriguing, precedent-setting terms: in this case, Burberry has been awarded not only a huge sum of money but the offending domain names as well, including yesburberryvision.com and buyburberry.com.

Burberry also has the power, decided the judge, to "hold third-party hosts; payment processors; search engines, such as Google, and social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, accountable for associating with the infringing sites," writes Women's Wear Daily. If a site is found to be in cahoots with the counterfeiters, says WWD, Burberry could cut them out from Web searches altogether.

Let's hope those Chinese counterfeiters aren't social media mavens.

Read more about Burberry's whopping payout at WWD.com. Tell us in the comment: have you ever purchased a fake designer bag?