Salon owner ordered to stop trading of Victoria's Secret name after lingerie giant's complaint

Ruling: Maria Rosana dos Santos was ordered to rename her parlour
Tirstan Kirk|Lauren Pilat15 September 2017
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A Mayfair beauty therapist has been ordered to stop trading off the name of Victoria’s Secret despite protesting that she has never heard of the lingerie giant.

Manicurist Maria Rosana dos Santos called her business Victoria Secret Beauty and set up a website victoriasecretbeauty.co.uk to draw customers to her parlour, now based in a hairdresser’s basement.

The 50-year-old claimed the business was set up in Victoria and was a “secret” as customers would have difficulty finding it. But internet dispute service Nominet has ordered her to give up the web address after a complaint from Victoria’s Secret.

In his ruling, Jason Rawkins from Nominet said Ms dos Santos had used a similar logo to the US underwear firm and rejected her claim that she did not know of the Victoria’s Secret name.

“Taking into account how well-known the Victoria’s Secret brand is, together with the very similar form of logo originally used by Ms dos Santos, her claim to have chosen the combined term Victoria Secret innocently is again not credible,” he said.

“I therefore find that she was aware of the Victoria’s Secret brand at the time when the domain name was registered. She registered the domain name, and has subsequently used it, in order to ride on the coat-tails of that brand and thereby gain a business advantage.”

Ms dos Santos, who set up her parlour on the second floor of a building in Victoria Street before moving two years ago to the basement in Conduit Street, Mayfair, was originally offered $2,500 (£1,847) by the US firm to change her website name, but she rejected the bid for the website she paid £250 for as “paltry”.

She today vowed to continue fighting the ruling. She claimed the company was “bullying” her and to protect her company she was going to continue fighting the matter on her own as she couldn’t afford a lawyer.

She said: “I’m a little fish and they’re the shark worth billions but I’m biting back. I chose the name because it made sense for the area. It was in Victoria Street, in Victoria and in a Victorian house on the first floor.”

Internet reviews of Ms dos Santos’s businesses are overwhelmingly complimentary of her beauty therapies and treatments. But one reviewer said she had thought the salon was linked to the lingerie giant, saying: “I was slightly misled by the naming of the salon — believing it was part of Victoria Secret lingerie chain which influenced my choice at booking my manicure here.”

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