• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, October 17, 2014

The owner of an Oregon-based jewelry and accessories store named Gilt is asking a judge to order the popular online flash-sale company Gilt Groupe to change its name.

Portland, Ore. resident Paula Bixel, who founded the Gilt store in 1994, says in a new complaint that Gilt Groupe's name confuses consumers. Gilt Groupe owns the trademark to its name, but Bixel is asking a court to cancel the discounters' trademark because her store used the name first.

Bixel acknowledges that she didn't officially seek a trademark until 2012 -- by which time Gilt Groupe had been awarded one. But Bixel says that she still has “common law” rights to the name.

Bixel says in her lawsuit, filed last week in U.S. District Court in Portland, that her store has sold vintage pieces and designer jewelry since opening in 1994. The entrepreneur, who later expanded into handbags and other accessories, adds that since 1999 she has used the name “Gilt” to sell online on platforms like eBay and Etsy and on its own site, www.giltjewelry.com.

“Gilt is known in Oregon and around the country as a source for sustainable, unique and hand-selected jewelry sold in an intimate environment with attention to the best possible service to its customers,” Bixel alleges. She says her shop has been featured in national magazines like Lucky, and that her celebrity customers include Susan Sarandon and Amanda Seyfried.

For the last two years, her business has received complaints meant for the flash-sale site, Bixel alleges. “Individuals have also come into Gilt's retail store looking to return products they bought from Gilt Groupe online,” she says. “Potential customers have complained to Bixel about the daily 'spam' e-mails and the poor customer service they receive from her company, referring to e-mails and service they have received not from Gilt but from the corporate giant Gilt Groupe.”

Those alleged “spam” complaints presumably refer to the emails that Gilt Groupe sends its members each weekday, alerting them to that day's sales.

Bixel says that Gilt Groupe began using the same name as her store “at a time when Gilt's presence was readily discoverable on the internet.”

By the time she applied for a trademark, in 2012, her application was rejected on the ground that Gilt Groupe had already obtained trademark protection.

Bixel isn't the only small business owner to clash with an online retailer about names. Most famously, a small feminist bookstore in Minnesota named Amazon, founded in 1970, sued the online retailer Amazon in 1999. The two companies later agreed that each could continue using the name. Six years ago, the bookstore in Minnesota went out of business.