IT was handbags at dawn during a court showdown between a multi-million pound company and Swindon Council over fake designer gear.

And at the centre of the furore was the floppiness of the Playboy bunny's ears.

Priceless Shoes in West Swindon was fined £2,000 and ordered to pay £2,212.50 costs after admitting to magistrates two charges of selling fake designer goods.

This came after the shop was caught selling handbags with a fake Playboy bunny logo emblazoned on them.

But, Dominic Kay, defending, claimed that the business had been assured by its suppliers that the bunny's ears on the handbags were too floppy to infringe any Playboy trademark.

The court heard that on February 24 last year, trading standards officer Christopher Williams spotted the bags in the shop and carried out a test purchase of one of them for £5.

He also carried out a test purchase on Louis Vuitton bags that were also believed to be fake.

Charges concerning these bags were dropped before it went to court.

The Playboy bag was then sent to the trademark holders for Playboy to see if it was a fake logo and they confirmed that the item was not official merchandise.

Trading standards officers then raided the shop and seized 44 items, including seven Playboy bags.

Phil Wirth, prosecuting on behalf of trading standards, said: "Priceless Shoes is owned by parent company Stylo Barrett and has 150 shops in the UK with a £70m turnover.

"Overall they had distributed nearly 3,000 of these bags throughout their shops and they then withdrew 1,503 of them as soon as they were told by us that they infringed trademark.

"There were not enough precautions in place to stop this happening as they only had a contract with the suppliers not to hand over any goods that would infringe trademark or were of a poor quality and on this occasion they only had a verbal assurance that they were perfectly legal.

"The company should have checked itself."

Mr Kay stated that the company had never been to court before for this type of offence and, that since the discovery of the Playboy bags, had put in rigorous procedures to make sure it would never happen again even employing someone full time to check on the legality of goods sold.

The magistrates ordered the fake goods be destroyed.

After the hearing Robert Taylour, of Swindon Trading Standards, said: "We obviously try to work with businesses to ensure compliance with the legal requirements of trademark law.

"It's important that the trademark owners are protected and people do not take advantage of selling fake designer goods in this way."

Jamie Hill