Following last month’s lawsuit against an online T-shirt retailer for several million dollars, Harley-Davidson has launched a second legal salvo, this time against Forever 21.
Forever 21 (according to Wikipedia, the fifth-largest specialty retailer in the US, and with 44 stores in Canada), has been selling clothes with a bar-and-shield graphic that bears a similarity to Harley-Davidson’s trademarked logo. The graphic does not actually use the Harley-Davidson name, unlike some of the shirts sold by Gear Launch, implicated in August’s lawsuit. However, according to Harley-Davidson, the graphic is close enough to warrant a lawsuit.
Harley-Davidson is reportedly looking for millions of dollars once again — $2 million US per mark per type of product, so potentially a huge number, depending how many garments sold with this graphic. Their lawyers are also demanding the destruction of all clothes bearing the logo, saying the Harley-Davidson brand is suffering damage.
The jacket does not seem to be available on the Forever 21 website.
Add in the potential gains of their lawsuit against Gear Launch, and Harley-Davidson could make enough money to pay off its huge penalty imposed last month by the EPA. To some, the timing of these lawsuits might seem suspiciously like a way to pay off other legal bills, but according to the Milwaukee BizTimes, Harley-Davidson launched a similar suit against Urban Outfitters back in 2014, which was settled out of court. The reality of running a company so dependent on branding is that these lawsuits are going to happen a lot, to keep other companies from taking over your turf — even it means going so far as to try to trademark a “potato-potato” sound.
Geez! I know the clowns on here are making the “To some, the timing of these lawsuits might seem suspiciously like a way to pay off other legal bills” argument, but I’d like to think that critical thinkers would just see for themselves that copyright laws exist for a reason.
Guess I was wrong.
It looks like pretty blatant infringement if you ask me. But hey, you go spend the money to develop a multi million dollar brand and just sit by while others appropriate it and make money without compensating you.
Filing lawsuits to pay the bills. That’s low.
Have U guys seen the product in question (which the CMG staff could have easily showed) – https://www.biztimes.com/2016/09/20/harley-davidson-suing-forever-21/ – it’s pretty obvious it would violate copyrights – so why the negativity?
They would have 50% more sales if the price came down 15 to 20% …
But… the price DID come down 15 to 20% here in Canada, once Deeley was cut out of the loop.
Harley’s have never been more affordable!
Too bad they don’t put the same amount of effort into engineering as they do t-shirts.
One more reason why I cant stand Harley.
Gimme a break….