If your original designs have been copied by a trade rival, you do not have to just grin and bear it. The point was made by a High Court case in which a fashion business on the receiving end of such conduct was awarded six-figure damages.
The business sold figure-hugging garments inspired by celebrities, mainly to young women. It launched proceedings after similar garments to its own appeared on the website of fashion industry competitors. Following a trial, the Court found that seven of the competitors’ garments had infringed the business’s design rights.
In concluding that the infringing garments were copies of the business’s wares, the Court found that their purported designer had simply taken an image of the originals before sending it off to a factory to be reproduced. She ought to have known that such activity was unlawful; her evidence could not be relied upon and she had displayed at least a ‘couldn’t care less’ attitude to the rights of others.
The business was awarded just over £150,000 in compensation to reflect its loss of profit and royalties on the competitors’ sale of more than 15,000 infringing garments over a four-year period. In recognition of the flagrancy of the infringements, the competitors were also ordered to pay £300,000 in additional damages. The latter sum took account of the need to proportionately and effectively punish the competitors and to deter them from further acts of infringement.