Careful With That Louis Vuitton

Careful With That Louis Vuitton

Monday 05th of May 2008 02:00:43 AM

Careful With That Louis Vuitton

Printing T-Shirtsis serious business. It is important to remember that no matter what the message of your T-shirt is, you need to respect trademarks and copyrights just as you would in any other form of printed material.

Take for example the recent lawsuit brought by Louis Vuitton against designer and artist Nadia Plesner for her creation, The Simple Living T-shirt. The T-shirt features a person who is meant to be from Darfur holding a little dog and a designer bag. Ms. Plesner says that her thought was, “Since doing nothing but wearing designer bags and small ugly dogs apparently is enough to get you on a magasine cover, maybe it is worth a try for people who actually deserve and need attention.” 100 percent of the profits from the sale of these T-shirts is going to the Divest for Darfur campaign.

Louis Vuitton maintains that the designer bag used on the T-shirt graphic is one from his company’s collection. Part of Louis Vuitton’s letter to Nadia Plesner reads: “Although we applaud your efforts to raise awareness and funds to help Darfur, a most worthy cause, we cannot help noticing that the design of the Simple Living Products includes the reproduction of a bag infringing on Louis Vuitton's Intellectual Property Rights, in particular the Louis Vuitton Monogram Multicolore Trademark to which it is confusingly similar. We are surprised of such a promotion of a counterfeit bag.

The lesson here is simple. No one disputes the validity, necessity and importance of raising funds for Divest for Darfur. Nor do they dispute that a T-shirt is a good way to raise funds. However, as with all printed materials, you may not use the image or words of another person or company without their permission. While, the truth may certainly be that the bag on this T-shirt is not meant to resemble a Louis Vuitton bag, as Ms. Plesner maintains, it appears similar in the eyes of the Louis Vuitton company and that is enough to create a problem that could have been avoided.

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