Dive Brief:
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Lilly Pulitzer owner Sugartown Worldwide is suing Gap Inc. brand Old Navy for copyright infringement of two of its patterns.
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Sugartown alleges that Old Navy substantially copied two Lilly Pulitzer prints, the "High Tide Design" and "Sparks Fly Design," causing the company “irreparable harm.”
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In the suit, Sugartown seeks damages and an injunction to stop Old Navy from selling the designs.
Dive Insight:
Producing “knock-offs” to some extent are the bread and butter of lower-priced apparel, whose designers pay close attention to what’s happening on the runways and in fashion magazines to come up with similar styles for consumers with tight budgets and fashionista taste.
Those designers can get away with quite a lot because copyright law is fairly limited when it comes to fashion design. That’s because clothing is considered a “utilitarian” product. Shirts require armholes, pants require legs, hats must fit on heads. So for the most part, cuts aren’t very well protected by copyright laws.
But patterns are a different story. To gain copyright, a pattern (or other creative work) must be “fixed” (written down or recorded), expressed (the work must go beyond the idea stage to actually be created), and must be original (this can be extremely subjective but it aims to prevent common phrases, melody lines, or brush strokes from being copyrighted).
A pattern may be more akin to a painting than to an item of clothing. Indeed, Lilly Pulitzer is arguing that the patterns it says were copied by Old Navy began as paintings in its studios.
Lilly Pulitzer fans have noted the similarities and blasted them out on social media, which only bolsters Sugartown’s argument.