Versace has won a record compensation amounting to US$20 million in a counterfeit case against several American retailers. The popularly-known luxury brand said the damages awarded by a US court were one of the highest ever obtained by an Italian company in a counterfeiting case brought abroad.

The case is about a 2003 complaint that involved more than 70 retails stores in Southern California and Arizona that sell fake products bearing the Versace brand. It eventually resulted to over 110 arrests.

"We have won a historic judgment, reached at the culmination of the anti-counterfeiting action undertaken by the Group and whose effects will benefit all luxury Italian brands," Versace CEO Gian Giacomo Ferraris said in a statement.

Source:  Reuters, via Yahoo!