fashion
copyright / trademarks / design / advertisement / distribution
Lipstick Lawyering
In the middle of last month, the EU General Court ruled on the question, whether the shape of a lipstick case can function as a trademark. The judgment reverses an earlier, negative decision of [...]
Revisiting Chanel v. Huawei
A battle of the giants: fashion powerhouse Chanel and tech gigant Huawei fought it out in the realm of IP law, which allowed for a clarification of the extent of protection of visual marks [...]
Terminating Your Model Agency Contract
The Higher Regional Court of Celle in Germany recently ruled on the question whether fashion model agency contracts are so-called “contracts of higher nature” according to German Civil Law with the consequence that the [...]
Punk + IP = ?
Fashion designer, activist and renowned maverick Vivienne Westwood is one of the stars on the fashion sky. Her shows are legendary, her designs revolutionary: she patented the platform ‘pedestal’ shoe, created punk and is a [...]
The Laws of Appropriation
It’s fairly common for fashion designers to take stylistic inspiration from a variety of sources. Cross-cultural influences are nothing new and they greatly enrich creative practices, but there’s a boundary of respect that definitely needs [...]
Notes on Bottega
"Welcome to ‘New Bottega’ – a term that, for many, carries the same sentiment as ‘Old Céline’, which is where 34-year-old designer Daniel Lee worked under the tutelage of Phoebe Philo before joining the [...]
A Multicolor Trademark Battle
Often, copycats who use someone else’s trademarks try to worm their way out of litigation with one “simple trick”: trademark parody. However, as “My Other Bag” had to learn due to a recent judgement by [...]
Consumers Can Be Smart, Says Hamburg Court
In its recent judgement, the Higher Regional Court of Hamburg (OLG Hamburg) made a (for German courts) surprising decision: consumers are sometimes not gullible and can detect advertising. The court attests, that the average Instagram [...]
Louis Vuitton (Kind Of) Checkmates the EUIPO
"Damier" is French and means "checkerboard" or "chessboard". And such a chessboard pattern is at the heart of a years long struggle of Louis Vuitton's to secure it's trademark rights in the pattern. LV calls [...]
Do Accents Matter?
A few years ago, seemingly every single fashion brand did some rebranding and changed its logo to a geometric sans-serif design. Some brands changed even more. Two highly discussed changes are at the centre of [...]
Is Your Brand Prestigious Enough For The District Court of Hamburg?
The American label Michael Kors took the German discount supermarket LIDL to court over the sale of handbags– without success. The loss hinged on MK’s status as a “prestigious” brand, which [...]
Berlin Quo Vadis?
2020, it seems, is a year of great change in the fashion industry and especially for its fashion shows. Designers all over the world raised their voice to reform the over-heated fashion schedule. It began [...]
Who Is the Author on Set?
§ 7 German Copyright Code states, that the author is the creator of the work. However, most works in the creative industries today are collaborative efforts. A fashion editorial alone takes (at least) a photographer, [...]
The Reinvention of the Fashion World?
The Corona crisis is forcing many people around the world to rethink their habits and usual consumer behavior and to discuss alternative ways of living and working. Even the fashion world is not spared [...]
Design Law? In MY Animal Crossing? It’s More Likely Than You Think
Could Animal Crossing hurt planned design patents? The intuitive answer would be a no. The less obvious answer would be a no as well, but with quite a big but. Some of you may have [...]