Aritzia is facing an interesting new copyright infringement lawsuit, the fast growing fashion chain is being accused of “improperly displaying unauthorized and illegal sculptures” in its stores and thereby infringing Tangle Inc’s exclusive rights in the copyright protected designs.
Richard X Zawitz, the owner of Tangle Creations says the retailer placed hot pink sculptures identical to his prominently across its display windows across North America this spring in locations like Vancouver, Toronto, New York, Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Zawit alleges that the displays are identical to his work, down to the number of sections and the color and that they are a significant infringement of his copyright.
Zawitz has been producing his creations for about 40 years and has sold around 250 million of them some of which are hand held, while others are more large scale pieces.
He got wind of this infringement from a video that was posted on Tik Tok with over 6.4 million views, that shows employees at one of the Aritzia locations assembling the metallic pink sculpture for the store’s window display, some comments referenced its similarity to Zawit’s creations including one commenter who wrote “Giant tangled”. He got a glimpse of the sculptures while he was at a mall in Los Angeles.
Zawit and his lawyers tried to settle with Aritzia out of Court, but they were unable to reach an agreement and this led to a formal lawsuit been filed in April, the suit seeks up to $30,000(USD) per alleged instance of copyright infringement plus attorney fees. In a recent interview Zawit described the infringement as “disconcerting and a violation”, makes me wonder whether he would claim a moral rights violation as well.
I tried to find the video with the aritzia employees on tik tok but i couldn’t, maybe it has been taken down, if anyone finds it please post, but i have attached a link to a youtube video that shows Garwick talking about the infringement and i really think the sculptures are identical and he actually has a valid claim. I think Aritzia would eventually just opt to settle out of court but let’s see how it goes .
source- 1. www.thefashionlaw.com
2. www.the star.come
Communications Law