VirnetX, Reuters, DreamWorks: Intellectual Property

VirnetX, Reuters, DreamWorks: Intellectual Property April 4 (Bloomberg) -- VirnetX Holding Corp. said it filed a request for a new trial after losing a patent-infringement lawsuit coach outlet online against Cisco Systems Inc. In a statement yesterday, VirnetX Chief Executive Officer Kendall Larson said the company hopes that “with a new trial, a jury can decide the issues of infringement and damages based on the judge’s instructions and the merits of our claim.” In March, a jury in Tyler, Texas, cleared the networking-equipment maker of allegations it infringed inventions related to virtual private networks. VirnetX was seeking $258 million in damages. Doug Cawley of McKool Smith PC, a lawyer representing VirnetX, argued Cisco used the technology to improve security in its own networks. A virtual private network allows a website owner to interact securely with a customer or give an employee working remotely protected access to a company’s electronic files. VirnetX won a $368.2 million verdict against Apple Inc. in November over the same technology, including two of the same patents, before a different Tyler jury. In 2010, Zephyr Cove, Nevada-based VirnetX reached a $200 million settlement with Microsoft Corp. over the same inventions. The case against Cisco focused on the San Jose, California-based company’s routers, software and phones that have virtual-private networking functions including its Unified Communications Manager product, Telepresence or AnyConnect. VirnetX relies on patent licensing for its revenue. The company is testing its Gabriel Connection Technology to create secure communications links, according to its annual report. The case is VirnetX Inc. v. Cisco Systems Inc., 10-cv-00417, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Texas (Tyler). Thomson Reuters Patents System to Rank Lawyers, Professionals Thomson Reuters Corp., the New York-based specialty publishing house, received a patent on a method of rating lawyers and other professionals. Patent 8,412,564, was issued April 2, according to the database of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. It covers a “system and method of identifying excellence within a profession.” The patented technology depends on peer nomination and the peer evaluation of the top-ranking candidates scored in an independent research and objective evaluation process. Thomson Reuters applied for this patent in April 2008, with the assistance of Boston’s Edwards Wildman Palmer LLP. For more patent news, click here. Trademark Danish Games Company Can Use ‘Opus Dei’ Trademark, Court Says Opus Dei, the organization of Catholic clergy and laity that was heavily featured in “The DaVinci Code,” failed in its attempt to stop a Danish games company from using “Opus Dei” for the name of one of its games, the Copenhagen Post reported. A Danish court said Dema Games Asp’s “Opus Dei --Existence After Religion” game doesn’t fall into any categories that would conflict with the religious group’s trademark, according to the newspaper. Initially the Danish patent office rejected Opus coach purse outlet Dei’s challenge to the games company’s mark. When that was unsuccessful, took it the issue to the Danish court that specializes in IP disputes, the Post reported. In addition to losing the case, Opus Dei was ordered to pay the games company’s 45,000 Danish kroner ($7,756) legal fees, according to the Post. Suffolk County Raid Nets $10 Million in Counterfeit Goods Authorities in Suffolk County, New York, charged five people with trademark counterfeiting, racketeering, conspiracy and money laundering in connection with a haul of fake goods so big a tractor trailer and seven box trucks were needed to cart the goods away, the Suffolk County District Attorney said. The seized goods included fake handbags, sunglasses, shoes, and machinery used to create fake counterfeit designs, according to a statement by prosecutors. District Attorney Thomas J. Spota said the accused defendants were buying fake made-in-China handbags for $2 each and selling them for as much as $25. If the handbags were sold on the street or at an at-home handbag party, they would have fetched as much as $100, according to the statement. Among the brands featured on the fake products was LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA’s Louis Vuitton. Spota said a genuine Louis Vuitton bag costs from $1,000 to $4,000. Among the other brands that showed up on the counterfeit goods were Coach, Tory Burch, Michael Kors, Jimmy Choo, Nike, Oakley, Prada, Chanel and Kate Spade. The retail value of the seized merchandise is in excess of $10 million, prosecutors said. The defendants laundered their profits by buying jade and other jewels, and real estate, with some of the rest of the money sent to banks in China and to pay for real estate investments there and in Manhattan, Florida and California. Estee Lauder Sued by Texas Cosmetics Company Over ‘Shy’ Mark Estee Lauder Cos.’ Clinique Laboratories unit was sued for trademark infringement by a Texas-based cosmetics company. Sara Cosmetics Inc., of Richardson, Texas, objects to Clinique’s use of “Shy” in connection with some of its lipstick and blush products. Sara Cosmetics registered the term as coach factory outlet website a U.S. trademark in February 2011, according to the complaint filed April 2 in federal court in Dallas. Clinique is also accused of using look-alike packaging that includes “adornments of green aloe leaves” that are allegedly substantially similar to the packaging used by Sara Cosmetics. Packaging design is protected under U.S. trademark law. The Texas company said customers are likely to be confused and that it is harmed by Clinique’s actions. Sara Cosmetics asked the court to bar further infringement of its mark and packaging, and for awards of money damages, including lost profits. Additionally, the Texas company asked the court for extra damages for what it claims is “oppression, fraud, malice and gross negligence” on Clinique’s part, and also seeks awards of attorney fees and litigation costs. Estee Lauder didn’t respond immediately to an e-mailed request for comment. The case is Sarah Cosmetics Inc. v. Clinique Laboratories LLC, 3:13-cv-01362-M, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Texas (Dallas). For coachoutlet.com more trademark news, click here. Copyright DreamWorks Fails to Win Dismissal of ‘Kung Fu Panda’ Suit DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. has to face a copyright infringement suit over its “Kung Fu Panda” film, a federal judge in Boston ruled. U.S. District Judge Joseph L. Tauro, rejecting the Glendale, California-based film studio’s bid to have the suit dismissed, ruled that Boston artist Jayme Gordon raised enough genuine issues of material fact in the February 2011 case to bar an early end to the litigation. Gordon contends he first created his Kung Fu-fighting panda in “the early 1990s” and registered his copyright in 2000. He began selling clothing items featuring his characters through a retail store in the 1990s and had costumes made depicting some of them. The characters appeared at promotional events in and around Boston and were displayed on his website, luckylizard.com, he said. Gordon said he sent his illustrations and stories to the animation division of coach purse outlet DreamWorks in the 1990s. He received a rejection letter in October 1999 acknowledging receipt of the work, according to his complaint. Gordon claimed that DreamWorks’ “King Fu Panda” films and other products feature “characters, character depictions, character personality traits, illustrations, expression, settings, story elements, plot and sequences of events that are unlawful copies and derivatives” of his “Kung Fu Panda Power” work. He asked the court to order DreamWorks to pay him money damages, attorney fees and litigation costs and to acknowledge he is an author and creator of the “Kung Fu Panda” products. The judge said in his March 28 ruling that DreamWorks Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Katzenberg provided “conflicting testimony” about his procedure for handling unsolicited submissions made to the studio. He also said it was unusual that Gordon never got back his submitted material. These discrepancies need to be addressed by the court, the Tauro said. A court must decide whether DreamWorks independently developed the film or was influences by Gordon’s submissions, he said. The case is Jayme Gordon v. DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc., 1:11-cv-010255-JLT, U.S. District Court, District OF Massachusetts (Boston). St. Louis University May Sue Professors for Infringement The American Association of University Professors’ St. Louis University chapter may face copyright-infringement allegations if it releases a survey aimed at measuring the mood on campus, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. The professors group had taken exception with a survey released by SLU administrators that contained only one question about the school’s president, about whom they claimed there was much campus discontent, according to the newspaper. General counsel for the school sent an e-mail to the president of the faculty organization warning that its survey is too similar to the administration’s, and that the school may file an infringement suit, and have to pay money damages and the school’s attorney fees, coach outlet stores the Post-Dispatch reported. In response, the president of the faculty group has filed a complaint with the American Civil Liberties Union, saying its free-speech rights are being violated, the newspaper reported. For more copyright news, click here. To contact the reporter on this story: Victoria Slind-Flor in Oakland, California, at vslindflor@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Hytha at mhytha@bloomberg.net. Before it's here, it's on the Bloomberg Terminal. LEARN MORE

Baby Means Coach Bag, Jordan Shoes

Baby Means Coach Bag, Jordan Shoes in ‘Milk Like Sugar’: Review In “Milk Like Sugar,” three high school girls vow to get pregnant at the same time, with an eye to the cool stuff a baby will endow them with. Kirsten Greenidge’s play, given a high-voltage New York premiere at Playwrights Horizons, opens in a tattoo parlor in an unidentified inner city. Nearly every sentence uttered by these high-spirited girls ends in “yo,” an obscenity, or both. Annie, played with startling grace by Angela Lewis, is getting a tattoo to celebrate her Sweet Sixteen. She’s the smart one; Talisha (Cherise Boothe) is vicious and mean, while Margie (Nikiya Mathis) already is pregnant and giggly with anticipation of those goodies coming her way: A Coach diaper coach purse outlet bag. Jordan sneakers. coach purse outlet A three-wheeled jogging stroller, perhaps. Definitely a better cell phone. The litany of brand names serves as an early warning alarm that we’re in for a morality tale, and “Milk Like Sugar” -- a reference to the formula that the girls were weaned on rather than mother’s milk -- doesn’t disappoint. This is a tiresome after-school special pumped up with naughty words and such heavy-handed symbols as a telescope to survey the infinite universe and a notebook that may hold the key to a better future. coach outlet stores Directed by Rebecca Taichman, it even seems to be taking place on a sound stage. Ferocious PinkinsAnd yet there is, in addition to Lewis, a ferocious coach purses outlet performance by Tonya Pinkins as Annie’s mother, Myrna, who cleans offices at night and uses her access to computers to write her stories. (Not in this age of security, another point that makes “Milk Like Sugar” feel like yesterday’s news.) Myrna, never seen without a cigarette dangling menacingly from her lips, is acid on Annie’s dreams. College will be too expensive, and who is she, anyway, thinking she’s better than the rest? Will Annie coach factory outlet website resist the pull of conformity? Keep your eye on the tattoo guy. At 416 W. 42nd St. Information: +1-212-279-4200; http://playwrightshorizons.org. Rating: * What the Stars Mean: **** Do Not Miss *** Excellent ** Good * So-So (No stars) Avoid(Jeremy Gerard is the drama critic for Muse, the coach factory outlet website arts and leisure section of Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.) Before it's here, it's on the Bloomberg Terminal. LEARN MORE

Teaching an Old Bag Some New Tricks

Teaching an Old Bag Some New Tricks coach online outlet Lew Frankfort is the sort of guy who gets emotional about handbags. The 57-year-old chairman and CEO of Coach Inc. points to a straw-and-leather basket in his Manhattan office and insists: "These bags are art!" The baby-blue Hamptons Weekend tote, which also comes in red, white, or black, is such a hit that he wants to make the style a fixture in next year's collection as well. And he's moved by how keenly people want Coach products. One woman he met in Japan, he says, waited more than six hours in line to get into Coach's new flagship store in Tokyo. coach factory outlet online You couldn't say that seven years ago. Back then, customers were starting to tire of Coach's thick leather bags -- sturdy and conservative and with all the sex appeal of a catcher's mitt. With kate spade and other high-fashion competitors gaining popularity, the cachet of Coach was waning. But thanks to a design renaissance led by President and Executive Creative Director Reed Krakoff, 39, who came aboard in 1996, Coach's high-end merchandise is once again au courant. Its bags, which can sell for more than $200, boast a range of new shapes, fabrics, and leather. Frankfort and his team also have extended the brand into watches, hats, shoes, sunglasses, coats, and even straw beach mats with the signature "C" in leather. And as competition has heated up in the midmarket category, Coach is gaining share by offering consumers an alluring combination of style and durability. As Paula Kalandiak, a research analyst with Wells Fargo Securities LLC, contends, "the quality for the dollar spent is unparalleled." Just as important, the financials now look as spiffy as the merchandise. Coach was spun off from Sara Lee Corp. in an initial public coachoutletonline offering in 2000, when that conglomerate decided the handbag maker was not a core business. Now Coach has risen to No. 12 on this year's Hot Growth list thanks to strong gains across the board. Annual sales over the past three years have increased an average of 12%, to $893.1 million. Earnings rose an average annual 72%, to $134.1 million, thanks largely to outsourcing (Coach no longer manufactures its own products), improved operating efficiencies, and better terms with suppliers. And Coach's stock price is up 46% in the past year. Frankfort credits Krakoff with finding a way to blend what he terms "logic and magic" to woo hip young buyers without alienating Coach's older consumers. Krakoff, a former design guru at Tommy Hilfiger USA Inc., was en route to Milan when he stopped by to check out a job with Frankfort in 1996. After a one-hour meeting, Frankfort canceled his appointments for the rest of coach online outlet the day to keep talking with the man who would become his new partner. Krakoff showed Frankfort a deep appreciation coach outlet sale for both the shortcomings and the strengths of the leather-goods maker in that meeting, describing coach online outlet the Coach brand as "amazingly consistent, narrow, and deep." Both men agreed, however, that it was time to move Coach to the next level. The following July, Coach unveiled the Ergo collection, which focused on a new, rounded shape for bags. By 1998, it moved into a mixture of leather and fabrics. Gone were the disconcerting ads that featured bag-toting descendants of icons like George Washington. "They seemed more standoffish and arrogant; more the exclusive domain of the rich," says retail consultant Kurt Barnard. Instead, the company used "living legends" such as Candice Bergen and John Irving to hawk its products and attract the younger buyers Coach yearned for. Today, the transition is complete: Current ads feature models toting Coach's cool products. The strategy is working. While the average Coach consumer is still around 40, the lucrative 18-24 market now accounts for 11% of its U.S. sales, up from 5% in 1996. Getting them young is crucial to building brand loyalty, Frankfort says. Analysts note that the company is attracting more first-time buyers to its 150 Coach retail stores, while its core constituency continues to buy. And sales in Japan, where Coach struck a joint venture with Sumitomo Corp. in 2001, are also booming and could total 20% of revenues this year. The line is so hot, in fact, that Coach might be tempted to slap that "C" on just about anything. And that could be its downfall. Designer Danny Seo wonders whether Coach is becoming too accessible and overexposed. "Every woman doesn't want to have a 'C' logo bag if everyone else does," he argues. But Krakoff wants to grow without brand extensions that go too far. He doesn't envision, for example, Coach bed linens. "I don't see us in the home business," he says. Instead, he wants to create more accessories and revisit old classics like the duffel bag, but with new fabrics or some other twist. Coach's transformation is already so entrenched that some younger customers can't quite believe they're buying a brand that has been around since 1941. "It looks pretty trendy for something that old," says Susanna Liu, a 27-year-old marketing executive, while shopping in the company's flagship store on New York's Madison Avenue. As long as it keeps shoppers coming in the door, Coach is happy to live with the contradiction. By Diane Brady in New York Before it's here, it's on the Bloomberg Terminal. LEARN MORE

China's Luxury Boom Is Very Different From Japan's Luxury Boom

China's Luxury Boom Is Very Different From Japan's Luxury Boom Erwan Rambourg, "The Bling Dynasty" Jan. 20, 2015, 1:15 PM 21,788 12 facebook coach online outlet linkedin twitter email print Buy this car if you want to stand out. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon In his 2003 book, "Living It Up: America's Love Affair with Luxury" (Simon & Schuster), James Twitchell made the case that the urge of fitting in is depressingly vulgar but essential. The message from many luxury brands is that products will enable consumers to ‘re-invent' themselves and that they ‘deserve' to reward themselves. Two recurring questions I hear are: ‘How is Chinese luxury demand different to Japanese demand?' and ‘As there is limited growth with the Japanese, what is the risk that growth moderates quickly now with the Chinese?' First, China is the only male-driven luxury goods market. Japanese consumption in the space has been essentially female driven. But beyond that, there are many more consumer profiles in China and many differences in culture, history and sociology which make me believe that growth can continue strongly with the Chinese for some time still. I have a friend, Francis Belin, who runs Swarovski for Asia Pacific and used to run Jaeger-LeCoultre (a watch brand, part of the Richemont group) for Japan. His view is that Japanese people used to purchase luxury products to fit in whereas Chinese are buying the goods to stand out. There are actually similarities there: consumption serves a purpose of being perceived as part (or not part) of a group. In Japan, you became part of society; in China, you leave the have-nots and show face when buying luxury. As Tom Doctoroff puts it in "What Chinese Want: Culture, Communism and the Modern Chinese Consumer" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), individuals in China ‘stand out in order to fit in', meaning individual expression usually does not imply a break from the norm but a slight step up without straying away too much from conformity. This also may explain why it is rare to come across extremely innovative brands of Chinese origin. Chinese individual expression is, however, challenged or made more intricate by the impact of Confucianism that continues to drive many relationships in society. At the center of Confucianism are the ‘five bonds', which imply that individuals exist only through the lens/prism of these five sets of relationships: from ruler to ruled, from father to son, from husband to wife, from elder brother to younger brother and from a friend to a friend. Confucianism replaced legalism in China after the country's first imperial dynasty (Qin: 221–206 BC) and has been a strong influence ever since. Events unfolding during last century in China have been key to understanding the relevance of foreign luxury goods in the market. During the Mao era, Chinese were constrained by political fear and, for many, poverty. The People's Republic of China was founded in 1949 with Mao as chairman, following nine years of civil war ending with Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang movement fleeing to Taiwan and founding the Republic of China (ROC). Soon after, in the early 1950s, land reform and the campaign to suppress counter-revolutionaries began. The Great Leap Forward led to famine. In 1966, Mao announced the initiation of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Maoist policies meant to develop the country at all costs, one of them being to tone down 5,000 years of culture and history or, as the People's Daily expressed in June 1966: ‘Sweep away all monsters and demons' by getting rid of the four olds. There is a direct correlation between that history and luxury consumption: Chinese are looking to imported brands for history and craftsmanship. Shoppers walk past a Calvin Klein billboard in Hong Kong. Jonas Gratzer/LightRocket via Getty Images Many Chinese fled while Mao was in power; many more got out of the country later as frontiers became easier to cross. I mentioned Li Ka-shing before, who made money selling plastic flowers to the world that were produced in Hong Kong and eventually ran businesses worth billions. Jimmy Lai, born in 1948 in China, coach online outlet is another well-known multi-entrepreneur, founder of apparel brand Giordano and the Next Media group. He fled at age 12 to Hong Kong, smuggled aboard a boat. These men are two of many symbols of the success story of coachoutletonline the Pearl River Delta, an extremely successful hub of cities now known for its pollution levels but initially known for being the ‘Factory of the World'. At the heart of the Pearl River Delta story is the development of Shenzhen, a town of merely 300,000 people—a friend who has been in the region for a while says it was really more a small fishing village then—when Deng Xiaoping made it the first Special Economic Zone in 1979. Now it is a more than 10-million-inhabitant megacity known for fakes and set up right across from Hong Kong to experiment with the capitalist world and establish more realism than during the Mao era in a ‘Socialist Market Economy', a sort of capitalism experiment within a communist country. Entrepreneurs who fled China brought about the success of Taiwan and Hong Kong. Now these entrepreneurs are looking at the other opportunistic side of the coin: as China politics are no longer dogmatic but pragmatic, those entrepreneurs want to go back—or at least develop strong commercial ties with the country. Deng Xiaoping, starting in 1979 and with the ‘one country, two systems' policies he implemented in the early 1980s, was of course instrumental in changing many realities in China. As Deng famously put it: ‘It doesn't matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice'. That attitude signaled the end of dogma and the beginning of economic realism and in turn great confidence from the people. Politics and economy explain many differences between Japanese and Chinese consumption of luxury, but other differences are due to social, demographic and cultural trends. Akiko Kondo, a 20-year-old student, looks into a show window displayed with Louis Vuitton pocketbooks at a Big Camera shop in Tokyo Monday, July 24, 1995. AP Photo/Koji Sasahara The Parasite Single, Parasaito Shinguru In 1999, Professor Masahiro Yamada published a book called "The Age of Parasite Singles", describing the common feature of single Japanese, in their twenties or often beyond, living with their parents and spending the majority of their vast disposable income on luxury goods, travel, spas and other discretionary products. In popular culture, especially when describing women, this ‘parasite single' is a derogatory expression as these people are seen as partly responsible for the decrease in the number of marriages and in turn Japan's low birth rate, which is by extension responsible for many of the economic woes of the country. This Japanese oddity has meant that young women working as office ladies (OLs) have been able to live above their means as they do not bear the burden of very hefty Japanese rents—and key money associated with renting a new place—while having many meals and other ‘amenities' (laundry, etc.) taken care of by their loving parents. Often parents do not actually see this as a burden, as there is the expectation that kids will take care of parents as they age and find life more difficult. A sort of family ‘win-win' really. More recently, around 2006, alongside the concept of parent-dependent OLs, Japan has also invented the concept of ‘herbivore men', young men who literally have no interest in flesh (or to be clear: sex) and avoid being in a relationship with a girlfriend in order to live frugally and look after themselves. This phenomenon is adding to the issue of weak Japanese demographics. While female parasite singles have created the luxury market in Japan, herbivore men have boosted metro sexual-related consumer sub-segments, such as male cosmetics, for instance. Today the rise of the YUMMIES (young urban males) for premium consumption extends beyond Japan. While such a social phenomenon has made part of the Japanese population maritally inept, some parts of the economy have benefitted. Ten years ago, half of Louis Vuitton sales in the world coach factory outlet online were made to Japanese consumers. And while I've heard often Tiffany Ma saying ‘I can't buy Vuitton, I've seen it too much, it's a brand for secretaries', at the time it was factually true and not really an issue. The Japanese OL made Louis Vuitton a success; Chinese consumption is now compensating for the fact that she is not as dominant, has grown older and is not being replaced in Japanese society. One nationality has replaced the other. "I can't buy Vuitton, I've seen it too much, it's a brand for secretaries." AP Photo/Alexander F. Yuan The Japanese luxury boom came at a time when the economy was going through the ‘lost decade', which started after the asset bubble burst in December 1989. The value of the Nikkei (the Tokyo Stock Exchange) was reduced by five between the 1989 peak and the 2003 trough. But while all hell was breaking loose, counter-intuitively, the OLs were creating the largest luxury market in the world. Japan is perhaps an extreme example, but a good one that shows that luxury demand is not always correlated to economic growth and that social and cultural trends and, generally speaking, ‘soft issues' are really what count. Besides, in some instances, the luxury market, given its consumers, can be somewhat associated to a mass market. Though Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's policies in 2013 seem to have given a boost to Japanese domestic luxury sales—and the weakness of the yen also meant that consumers stopped purchasing goods abroad—I believe the growth of the Japanese luxury sector is structurally impaired by the fact that there is virtually only one consumer demographic, the office lady, and that is on the wane. While higher-end consumers and men will contribute more in the future of Japanese luxury consumption, they probably will not manage to compensate for the fall of the OLs. Multiple Chinese Avenues to Growth In contrast to the Japanese market, the Chinese market for luxury goods is very much dominated by men for historical reasons linked to men's greater financial autonomy and corporate as well as government-related gifting practices. Some may argue that the sex ratio imbalance created by the one-child policy that was initiated by Deng Xiaoping in 1979 also will weigh on purchases, as in China, 113 boys are born for every 100 girls. However, unlike Japan, consumer profiles, as illustrated by our five Chinese avatar consumers, are extremely diverse, including, among others, aspirational lower-tier city dwellers, affluent first-tier city entrepreneurs, and Westernized overseas Chinese—more than 50 million souls. Anecdotally, the one-child policy has probably also been a beneficial measure for high-end consumption. Indeed, children have two parents and four grandparents who potentially have only that one child to spoil. Also, for the time being and, according to the US Census bureau, until 2025, China will continue to see its population expand. In 2026, after reaching close to 1.4 billion, China's population will start to decline. The King Is Dead, Long Live the King Chinese consumers, like many others, initially took their inspiration for many consumer products from Japan. This may seem odd to hear, given the historically strained relations between the two countries. Cognac is not that popular in Europe anymore but was quickly adopted in Japan as the drink for corporate outings—before those became out of favor—and was rapidly adopted by the Chinese elite. Louis Vuitton bags started becoming a regular feature in China ten years ago (i.e., the year sales peaked with the Japanese). Five years later, Coach became a huge success in Japan; it is starting to coachoutletonline do very well now in China. Shanghai-based fashionistas have long considered Tokyo the go-to place for trends. And fundamentally, while Japanese OLs were using luxury products to fit in, Chinese consumers were starting to purchase the same brands to show their peers that they had become successful in life. A woman shops at Hermés in Shanghai. LIU JIN/AFP/Getty Images Like avatar Calvin Li, many buy simply to say ‘Look, I can afford it so I'm worthy of your consideration'. In the initial phase of growth, of course, this may have coach outlet online led some, like Calvin, to make mistakes and buy counterfeits with no knowledge of it or to feel insecure in their choices. Probably the reason the bigger brands in Japan became immediately successful in China is the idea that if you can't judge for yourself, go for the brand that everyone knows. By doing so, you can't go wrong. The Japanese dominated luxury consumption ten years ago, representing up to half of Louis Vuitton's business in 2003. Now the Chinese do. Or as luxury execs could say: ‘The king is dead, long live the king'. Text and figures taken from "The Bling Dynasty: Why the Reign of Chinese Luxury Shoppers Has Only Just Begun" by Erwan Rambourg; ISBN: 978-1-118-95029-6. Copyright © 2014 by Erwan Rambourg. Reprinted with permission of Wiley. SEE ALSO: You've seen nothing like the lines outside Hong Kong luxury stores More: China Japan Luxury Louis Vuitton Book Excerpt