Stephanie Mark

After last week's battle between The-Coveted.com and TheCoveted.com--the new website that takes a peek inside the homes of fashion favorites--the latter has decided to changed its name to The Coveteur. Here's the email received from co-founder Stephanie Mark this morning: After the recent on-line buzz regarding our use of thecoveted.com, we write to advise you that as of tomorrow our business will be rebranded as The Coveteur and henceforth we will be using that name and our new website www.thecoveteur.com. Using the name “The Coveteur”, we will transition to a brand identity that we feel better encapsulates our concept. In regards to the legal issues surrounding our dispute with the-coveted.com, we refer you to our statement on www.thecoveted.com and are happy to be able to put these issues behind us. So, as of February 2, 2011, we will be known as "The Coveteur" and we look forward to bringing you new and exciting content weekly. Thank you for all of your support. Sincerely, Erin and Stephanie

You've undoubtedly heard of TheCoveted.com, a darling new website that gives us a peek inside the homes and wardrobes of fashion industry favorites. You've also probably heard about the little war raging between this new site and Jeanine Jacob, founder of Independent Fashion Bloggers, as well as her very own blog, The-Coveted.com. Both sites, thus, are called The Coveted, and Internet commenters have had a field day trashing the "new" Coveted and defending the "old" Coveted. And rightly so. While it's true that the sites are very different in style and audience, there's just no way The Coveted founders Erin Kleinberg and Stephanie Mark didn't know The-Coveted existed before they launched their site. Sure, they might not be subscribing to Jacob's site on their RSS feeds, but for someone to launch a website/blog and not even Google the name to make sure nothing else was named similarly seems pretty absurd. But that's exactly what Kleinberg and Mark are claiming. In fact, in a letter to Jeanine Jacob's lawyer responding to a request that TheCoveted.com cease using that domain (you can read it here), the duo's lawyer says that they were "unaware of your clients' website" and that if Jacob doesn't leave them alone, they're going to sue her. This all seems a bit insane to us, but we decided to consult a couple of lawyers to make sure we weren't missing an inextricable point. The conclusion: While in bad form, TheCoveted.com probably didn't do anything illegal by using that domain. However, Jacob does have a case--even if it's a weak one.