LEVIS SUING RALPH LAUREN
Levis first pair a jeans were made in 1874. Levis is now calling Ralph Lauren out saying that they stole their signature denim stitches, with “intersecting arcs and a cloth label for their own pockets.”
The lawsuits, which Levi’s says it is compelled to file to safeguard the defining features on its jeans, are not about the money — one settled for just $5,000 in damages. Instead, the company says, they are about removing copycats from stores. Nearly all the cases have settled out of court, with Levi’s smaller rivals agreeing to stop making the offending pants and to destroy unsold pairs.
But those competitors say the lawsuits are the last resort of a poor loser, a company that has lost billions in sales, laid off thousands of workers and flirted with bankruptcy as the denim industry exploded.
“They missed the boat,” said Tonny Sorensen, chief executive of Von Dutch Originals, a six-year-old denim and clothing manufacturer sued by Levi’s six months ago for allegedly borrowing the company’s double arcs for a back-pocket design. “Now they want to make a lot of noise and scare people away.”
Sorensen said his pocket design “did not look like Levi’s at all” because of subtle differences like placing the arcs “one inch to the left” and stitching a line to resemble “a pirate’s hook.”
Nevertheless, Von Dutch agreed to remove the jeans from dozens of boutiques and destroy hundreds of unsold pairs. “It was one style and it was not that successful anyway, so we made the decision not to fight it,” Sorensen said.
One thing that I learned about being in the fashion industry is that once your ideas is on the hangers it’s liable to be taken. I guess Levis feels that it has the right to sue every company that has any denim designs that are close to theirs.
Do you think Levis has gone over board???
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