A UK IP court has drawn on 2019 Cofemel ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), in ruling that a British homeware brand copied a former supplier’s designs.
According to the decision, issued by the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court (IPEC) last week, Edinburgh Woollen Mill (EWM) infringed the copyright for a jacquard fabric design.
Response Clothing, based in Lancashire, supplied womens’ tops to EWM from 2009 to 2012, featuring a wave design woven into the fabric.
The business relationship soured when Response attempted to raise the price it was charging EWM for the tops, prompting the Carlisle-based homeware brand to seek an alternative supplier.
According to the judgment, EWM then distributed a sample of Response’s fabric to alternative suppliers, inviting them to produce a similar design.
Response sued for copyright infringement, arguing that numerous tops sold by EWM since 2012 copied its original jacquard wave design.
According to the IPEC, although EWM did not copy “every detail” of the original wave fabric, each of the accused products infringed a “substantial part of [Response’s] design”.
The court said that only by adopting an overly “narrow view” of IP rights could EWM have thought that there was no risk of infringing Response’s copyright.
Source: World IP Review
