Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy SA, the world's largest maker of luxury goods, and Rakuten Inc. signed a deal to combat the sale of counterfeit designer products as Japan??s biggest online retailer expands into Europe.
The memorandum of understanding includes plans for a notification system for fake items sold on Rakuten's auction site, the companies said in an e-mailed statement. Rakuten's flagship online shopping service connects small-scale vendors to consumers, using a business model similar to parts of Amazon.com Inc. and eBay Inc.'s operations.
Europe's luxury-goods producers have clashed repeatedly over counterfeit goods with online retail and advertising companies such as Google Inc. and eBay. Luxury-industry trade groups said on Sept. 14 that Google's new rules allowing advertisers to use trademarked terms didn't provide strong enough safeguards against misuse.
Rakuten is expanding in Europe and the U.S. by acquiring existing e-commerce providers. In June it announced the 200 million-euro ($268 million) acquisition of France's PriceMinister SA, following an agreement in May to purchase U.S. site Buy.com for $250 million.
