Don’t Upset the Intellectual Property Fashion Police (Freedom-to-tinker)
A student group at the University of Pennsylvania Law School has put together
a fantastic symposium on the state of fashion law, but along the way they
(allegedly) snagged themselves on Louis Vuitton’s trademarks. After creating a
poster with a creative parody of the Louis Vuitton logo, they received a Cease
& Desist letter from the company’s attorneys claiming:
> While every day Louis Vuitton knowingly faces the stark reality of battling
and interdicting the proliferation of infringements of the LV Trademarks, I
was dismayed to learn that the University of Pennsylvania Law School’s Penn
Intellectual Property Group had misappropriated and modified the LV Trademarks
and Toile Monogram as the background for its invitation and poster for the
March 20, 2012 Annual Symposium on “IP Issues in Fashion Law.”
Ironically, the symposium aims to further education and understanding of the
state of intellectual protection in the fashion industry, and to discuss
controversial new proposals to expand the scope of protection, such as the
proposed bill H.R. 2511, the “Innovative Design Protection and Piracy
Prevention Act”.
The attorneys at Penn responded by letter, indicating that Louis Vuitton’s
complaint failed any conceivable interpretation of trademark law — outlining
the standard …
Healthy Body = Functional Body. Hollywood Look Side Effect: Healthy Function