David Yurman vs. Mejuri Infringement Case Heats Up
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Mejuri punched back, but David Yurman isn’t having it as the legal battle between the two jewelry brands at opposite sides of the price spectrum intensifies.
Yurman sued Mejuri in December, describing the direct-to-consumer Millennial-focused Mejuri as a “serial copyist” with an approach that “penalizes creative designers who have invested significant time, and talent, into product design.” The suit claimed infringement of Yurman’s trade dress as well as dilution.
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Mejuri filed counterclaims in March, alleging the legacy jeweler is bullying “an emerging female-founded competitor” and arguing that the claims in the initial suit were “without merit and fundamentally at odds with what Mejuri stands for.”
The legal back and forth continued when Yurman answered Mejuri’s counter claims — using both words and pictures to make its case in court documents filed late Friday.
“For more than four decades, Yurman has designed, manufactured, promoted, marketed and sold unique fine jewelry products,” Yurman argued. “Today, Yurman is one of the leaders in jewelry design, with products that are instantly recognizable, highly acclaimed and widely known across the world. Yurman has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising its jewelry products.
“Mejuri, in contrast, copies and produces the designs of established jewelry brands, like Yurman, while touting — through flashy social media ads — that it offers these copied designs at lower prices. Mejuri’s counterclaims are a baseless attempt to distract from this conduct, its own lack of creativity and innovation, and the questionable quality of its designs,” Yurman continued. “Mejuri has engaged in a pattern of blatant and willful copying in an effort to exploit Yurman’s brand, capitalize on the goodwill Yurman has built over the past 40 years and cause confusion among consumers in the marketplace.”
To bolster its case, Yurman pointed to social media comments on the Mejuri Instagram account that appeared to call the brand out for copying.
One example noted of a Mejuri ring: “This is identical to one created by a small woman-owned business. She’s been making them since 2018. If you like this ring then buy the real deal @shopbreadcircus.”
But a spokesperson for Mejuri told WWD on Monday: “David Yurman’s response to Mejuri’s counterclaims is a weak attempt to hide the fact that it has no case against Mejuri. Instead of addressing the actual merits of the case —including that the designs Yurman claims to own have been used by jewelry designers for hundreds of years — Yurman once again attempts to malign Mejuri with irrelevant and baseless allegations of copying, while cherry picking unverified social media comments to spread false claims. This response further validates that Yurman is more interested in bullying an innovative competitor founded on empowering creators and making the industry more accessible for everyone, than actually trying to defend its claims. Mejuri will not be intimidated, and will continue to stand up for the values and original creations of our team by demonstrating in court just how baseless Yurman’s claims really are.”
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