A four-year battle with eBay Inc. has brought a name change at Huntington Beach’s Perfume Bay Inc. Web sites.
Perfume Bay, whose sites now are called Beauty Encounter, last year lost an appeal in a trademark infringement case against the online auctioneer and retailer.
Beauty Encounter, which sells perfume, makeup, and bath and body products online, opted to change its Web site addresses,Perfumebay.com and Perfume-bay.com,instead of continuing to battle in court.
Perfume Bay counts about $18.5 million in sales and employs 25 workers.
EBay first sued Perfume Bay in 2004, alleging that Perfume Bay’s Web sites were confusing to eBay customers, who were led to think Perfume Bay was an official eBay site.
The case went to trial in 2005. The courts found Perfume Bay clear on eight out of the nine counts. The ninth count alleged that Perfume Bay couldn’t use the word “bay” next to the word “perfume” in its Web site address.
In November, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the lower court ruling in 2005.
In an earlier interview with the Business Journal, Chief Executive Jacquelyn Tran said that Perfume Bay would have to focus on rebranding itself if it lost the appeal.
Regardless of the outcome, she said that Perfume Bay would continue doing business.
“We’re not going anywhere. I’ve worked too hard to get where I’m at,” Tran said.
Tran started Perfume Bay in 1999 with the help of her family, Vietnamese refugees who came to America in 1980.
