Recently, Sanders Law Group was able to win a substantial award for Cat & Dogma, LLC, in a federal copyright violation lawsuit against Target Corporation in Texas federal court. The award was based on Target’s flagrant knock off of an infant’s pajama design created and sold by Cat & Dogma.
As discussed in depth in Texas Monthly:
The David in question is Austin’s Adrian Layne, who has been designing and selling baby clothes under the label Cat & Dogma since 2015 (though she began selling hand-sewn garments at artisan fairs as far back as 2008). Her hottest-ticket items were garments illustrated with her “I love you” print. Layne designed it herself, and it was simple and straightforward, with the phrase drawn out in cursive and repeated in such a way as to make the pattern seem almost striped. She sold bibs, blankets, hats, and onesies in the design, both on her website and through other retailers such as Hatched Market and SnapdragonsBaby, which would buy her products wholesale. Up until recently, it was her most profitable design.
Layne only found out that Target was offering something similar in 2019, when one of her sales reps accused her of working with the chain store behind the representatives’ backs. “I wish I was working with Target, but no,” Layne recalls saying. Layne looked up the item on Target’s website and was at first flattered to see the familiar script on a onesie that came in a three-pack from one of Target’s in-house brands, Cloud Island. “I thought, ‘Oh wow, that’s so sweet that Target likes my designs,'” Layne says. But in retail, copying isn’t the sincerest form of flattery—it’s theft.
While Target argued they could not copyright the phrase “I love you”, it was the design including that phrase, in a lower case hand written font, repeated around the garment creating a striped pattern of text, that was unique. Side by side, the garments were extremely similar. Target did not argue they were not similar, but that the similarity would not constitute a copyright violation.
Ultimately, after a two day jury trial, Cat & Dogma prevailed. The jury awarded $1 million in damages.
Will Target continue its practices?
As Texas Monthly noted, the publication Fast Company had once written an article headlined “Some companies rip off products. Target imitates entire brands.”
Time will tell, but the attorneys at the Sanders Law Group stand ready to help those whose work is “knocked off” by others, in violation of their copyright rights.
Source: https://www.texasmonthly.com/style/cat-and-dogma-target-copyright-lawsuit/
