Techdirt. Stories filed under "clothing"

Design Patents Meet The Fashion World: Lululemon Suing Calvin Klein

Zachary Knight — Wed, 5 Sep 2012 23:05:34 PDT

One of the reasons some people in the fashion industry have for desiring copyright on clothing designs is to stop knockoffs from entering the market and "harming" the original designer. We have pointed out before that this is a pointless request as the fashion industry is hugely successful despite the lack of copyright and presence of cheap knockoffs. However, it seems that some companies have decided to go another route to take out cheap competition: design patents.

karm sends word that yoga pants maker Lululemon has decided that it can't compete with cheaper alternatives and so will sue the competition.

"This is a low barrier-to-entry industry. Lululemon, their success, has drawn new competitors throughout the mall," said independent retail analyst Brian Sozzi. "The valuation is so high. It's tough to warm up to a stock when you see so many new competitors."

In the suit filed in federal court in Delaware on August 13, Lululemon accused PVH Corp's Calvin Klein brand and manufacturer G-III Apparel Group Ltd of infringing three patents on the design of its yoga pants. Design patents protect the appearance of goods, in contrast to more common utility patents, which focus on how things work.

If that is not crazy enough, this same company has been able to compete with other big players without going to trial.

The company says it competes with athletic apparel heavyweights such as Nike Inc and Under Armour Inc by offering better quality, and it maintains its enviable margins by taking charge of every stage of the process - from design, to production, to sale.

If Lululemon can compete with those two companies by offering better quality to its customers, why is it not able to do so with Calvin Klein? Well, it makes the claim that some of these new products match their own quality but are far cheaper. Gee. I wonder if maybe there was something other than litigate that Lululemon could be doing that could work to its advantage. Like maybe competing on price. If quality is no longer a defining feature, then price is another good place to compete.

It really is sad when we see a company which feels threatened by the competition resorting to lawsuits rather than competing in the market. We have already seen how ridiculous such lawsuits can get with Apple and Samsung. But I guess that since that came out in favor of design patents, at least for now, we can probably expect to see many more of these kinds of lawsuits in the future.

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DailyDirt: Edible Clothing

Michael Ho — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 17:00:00 PST

Generally, people try to keep food from dropping on their clothes and making a mess. But some fashion designers can't seem to keep from trying to make food items into something wearable. Here are just a few kinda nutty examples.

The fad of molecular gastronomy has been crossed with handmade fashion accessories -- creating some wearable items that aren't too far from looking like marshmallow Peeps. These creations will be excellent garnish recipes for the "To Serve Man" cookbooks. [url]
Denim isn't actually too easy to digest for most people, but scratch-and-sniff jeans could make some folks want to try a bite. The scent-filled denim could be fruit-flavored -- or possibly made to smell like Teen Spirit/bodysprays/etc. [url]
Making clothes from edible pastry wrappers isn't just for kinky lingerie. Wearing fruit roll-ups doesn't sound too appealing for many situations, though... [url]
To discover more food-related links, check out what's floating around in StumbleUpon. [url]

By the way, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

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NY Police Destroy Counterfeit Clothes Rather Than Giving Them To The Homeless

Mike Masnick — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 09:23:29 PST

Last week there was a big controversy over the fact that some stores in NY were caught destroying unsold garments rather than donating them to charities. After people got upset, the main store in question, H&M promised that this wouldn't happen again. This week we've got a related, but somewhat different story, as the NY Police have admitted to shredding and burning the counterfeit clothes they've confiscated, rather than giving them to the homeless, as had always been done in the past. When asked to explain why, the police claimed "no one asked" for the confiscated clothing -- but many charities insist they had, in fact, made many requests for the clothing. Apparently, the destruction is being felt at clothing banks, who say they have many fewer clothes on hand this year than in the past.

Not surprisingly, a lawyer representing various clothing designers was quite happy with the news, saying that they don't want those clothes "back on the street," which suggests that the designers may have pushed for the police to destroy the clothes rather than help the needy. Of course, it's worth pointing out -- yet again -- the recent study that showed most people are not fooled by counterfeits, and they rarely represent a "lost sale." In fact, many counterfeit purchases lead to real purchases later on. So the idea that they act as a "substitute" or somehow "harm" a brand is not actually borne out by the research. And, of course, some companies have learned that there are ways to embrace counterfeiting to their own advantage, as a form of price differentiation.

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North Face Didn't Get The Message; Sues South Butt

Mike Masnick — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 08:40:00 PST

Earlier this year, we wrote about how outdoor clothing firm North Face was seriously overreacting in threatening a small parody clothing manufacturer run by an 18-year-old student creating clothing under the "South Butt" brand name. At the time, we were amused by the boy's lawyer noting:

"I did try to explain with a great deal of candor to counsel for the North Face that the general public is aware of the difference between a face and a butt."

Well, now he may get the chance to explain that in court as well. Despite all of the publicity around those original threats, which resulted in many people trashing North Face for threatening this parody operation, North Face has apparently decided to still move forward with a lawsuit against the kid (thanks Jackie). Apparently, North Face has no sense of humor whatsoever. It's really amazing that no one at North Face paid much attention to what was being said online about the company even in bringing the threat of a lawsuit. Now that it's actually filed, the backlash may be an even bigger deal. While it is true that companies need to police misuses of their trademark, this was an opportunity for North Face to act cool about it (and, hell, why not just grant the kid a license). It would have made them look cool. Instead, they look like big corporate bullies, beating up on a kid who was having fun selling a parody line of clothing.

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North Face Goes After South Butt Over Trademark Infringement

Mike Masnick — Thu, 1 Oct 2009 12:33:00 PDT

Another day, another story of a company reacting overly aggressively with a trademark infringement claim. North Face, the well known clothing company, apparently is not at all pleased with a student who created a parody line of clothing called "South Butt." The lawyer representing the student had a great quote:

"I did try to explain with a great deal of candor to counsel for the North Face that the general public is aware of the difference between a face and a butt."

And, indeed, that's the central question in most trademark lawsuits. Are the customers confused into thinking that they're buying one product, rather than the other. It would be pretty difficult for North Face to claim with a straight face that those buying South Butt clothing don't realize it's a different company...

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Clothing Firm Pirated Itself... And It Worked Great

Mike Masnick — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 10:27:40 PDT

As fashion designers in the US are, once again, pushing for a misguided new "fashion copyright," it's worth remembering that studies have repeatedly shown that knock off fashions are what help make the fashion industry so successful. They serve a few different purposes. They make the authentic versions appear more valuable (who would knockoff an unpopular fashion?). They help differentiate the market by letting the clothes diffuse to the lower end that would never buy the designer level clothes, and they push designers to keep innovating each year, because they want to keep coming out with something new to stay ahead of the counterfeiters.

Now, it appears that at least one clothing designer decided to use these facts to its own advantage. ReallyEvilCanine writes in to let us know how a South African t-shirt designer made its own counterfeit line of t-shirts and used that to boost the perception of the original line, while also being able to differentiate and sell into different markets: The brand, Love Jozi, created the "knockoffs" using the name Luv Jozi, and plenty of people picked up on it, at times lamenting how the Love Jozi people must be upset, but noting that "all the biggest brands" get copied. The Love Jozi people let the whole experiment run for about two years before revealing it. However, in the process, they showed that rather than worrying about counterfeits and fakes, there's something to be said for cornering the market on such things yourself. As REC noted in the submission, even when counterfeiters don't "play fair," you can still sell looooooots of t-shirts.

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