Katy Perry's appeal against a trademark decision about her name has been successful.
Australian designer Katie Taylor, who sells her garments under her birth name Katie Perry, sued the "Hot N Cold" singer for trademark infringement in 2019.
Last April, Taylor won a case that stated Perry's 2014 Australian tour merchandise breached a trademark that the designer had held since 2008.
That court decision was overturned Friday by three appeals judges who ruled in favor of Perry, saying that she used her name as a trademark for five years prior to Taylor creating her business in 2008.
The judges also canceled Taylor’s trademark registration at the time of the overturning. They found that the designer had only applied for a trademark once she realized that Perry’s reputation and some of her brand’s decisions could potentially increase the chances of “consumers potentially being deceived or confused.”
Taylor issued a statement to The Guardian expressing her disappointment with the latest ruling.
“This case proves a trademark isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on,” she wrote. “My fashion label has been a dream of mine since I was 11 years old and now that dream that I have worked so hard for, since 2006, has been taken away.”
“I have lost everything, including my trademark,” Taylor continued. “As you can imagine I’m devastated.”
"This case is an unfortunate one in the sense that two enterprising women in different countries each adopted their name as a trademark at a time that each was unaware of the existence of the other," reads the ruling, according to USA Today.
Katy Perry has yet to speak publicly about the ruling.
