By Giulia Gialletti and Merel Lommen The French fashion company Longchamp is well known for its Le Pliage tote bag, which has been one of the brand’s best-selling items since its launch in the nineties. However, in the recent decision of the Court of Milan of 13 December 2021, it became clear that the commercial …
Neal Stephenson coined the term “metaverse” in his 1992 novel Snow Crash, where it referred to a 3D virtual world inhabited by avatars of real people, sometimes facilitated by the use of virtual and augmented reality devices, which would blur the barrier between online and offline.
by Giulio Coraggio, Vincenzo Giuffrè and Micaela Jerusalmi The Esports market has been booming over the last years and the recent Covid-19 strict regulations impacting the sports sector and imposing social distancing have greatly increased the focus on Esports competitions so far. Even with this scenario, the legal challenges for global Esports online platforms and …
Cheating in Esports tournaments – legal arguments for discouraging bad players Read More »
By Valentina Mazza and Andrea Michelangeli In our fashion law predictions for 2020 (available here), we anticipated Italian case-law following the trend set by the CJEU in the Cofemel decision (for the illustration of the case, see our previous post here) by making it easier to access copyright protection in Italy. No magic wand, but …
By Roberto Valenti, Alessandra Tozzi and Lara Mastrangelo Copyright plays a paramount role in enhancing and protecting human creations, but, at the same time, it may clash with other fundamental rights and therefore needs to be balanced. During 2019 many events occurred in the copyright field. What will happen in the course of 2020? Art …
By Elena Varese and Valentina Mazza As “fashion shades and only style remains“, here you have our (hopefully stylish) guess on the top three fashion trends for this year.
By Alessandro Ferrari and Laura Borelli As we approach 2020, changes in the media landscape are accelerating at an unrelenting pace. The way consumers access their entertainment has come a long way from the traditional linear television and evolution is not taking any break. Factors such as AI and new technologies, as well as the …
It is common to spot groups of paparazzi taking pictures at celebrities, fashion icons and influencers on the streets not only during fashion weeks and events, but also in their day-to-day lives. At the same time, it has become increasingly frequent in the United States for paparazzi to file copyright infringement lawsuits against celebrities for sharing those pictures on the Internet, i.e. on social media platforms, without the photographers’ “permission or consent” or without paying them any licence fee.
The latest to be sued by a paparazzi for copyright infringement is no less than Victoria Beckham, but the list includes both celebrities like Jennifer Lopez, Ariana Grande, Gigi and Bella Hadid and brands such as Marc Jacobs and Versace. In general, these cases tended to end with out-of-court settlements that led celebrities to pay steep monetary damages. This created a precedent and many other lawsuits, which are still pending, followed, in the last few months.
Last July, with “The Dawn of Romanity” haute couture show against the Colosseum backdrop, Fendi paid tribute to its longtime Creative Director Karl Lagerfeld, with 54 outfits to represent his 54-year tenure at the maison. But who owns the rights in the image of the recently deceased iconic fashion genius?
According to some leaks, the worldwide famous designer Karl Lagerfeld, before his death, would have left the entirety of his heritage to his beloved cat Choupette. This is not the first time a person decides to nominate his pet as the universal heir: from Countess Karlotta Liebenstein to Alexander McQueen, leaving everything (or a big portion of one’s assets) to a pet has become a sort of trend for many celebrities… But what are the legal consequences in relation to the rights of image of the celebrity according to the Italian law?
As we already discovered in some of our previous articles, from 3D avatars to wardrobe advisers, passing through CGI and Robot IT girls, artificial intelligence (“AI”) is shaping our outfits and looks.
Indeed, AI is transforming the fashion industry in every element of its value chain and marketplace. In last years, all retail giants are using AI to improve the efficiency of sales systems and processes and to enhance clients’ shopping experience, offering a personalized service tailored on their interests and preferences.
Most of the biggest fashion houses – from H&M to Tommy Hilfiger – are now investing in algorithms that suggest styles to their customers.
As the Milan Fashion Week goes on in these days, we are eager to keep you updated with the very most recent fashion law topics and matters.
This time we speak about copyright after that on 12 September 2019, the CJEU issued the long-awaited decision on the Cofemel case C-683/17, which opens a new path for the copyright protection of designs in the EU and in Italy.
The case involved G-Star Raw CV and Cofemel – Sociedade de Vestuário SA, two companies active in the sector of clothing, including design, production and sale of materials. G-Star accused Cofemel of copying its designs related to jeans, sweatshirts and t-shirts products, claiming that its models constituted original intellectual creations qualified as “works” and protected under Portuguese Copyright Law. On the other side, Cofemel argued that such models could not be qualified as “works” and, hence, were not copyrightable.
The eSports market has grown at a tremendous pace over the past few years becoming a half billion dollar industry and it is quickly seducing an increasing number of fans, operators and investors. Beside the huge growth, the industry is rapidly evolving, going from content consumed largely through streaming platforms to network-backed streaming services.
The eSports law booklet from the Italian IPT team of DLA Piper covers a number of current and upcoming legal issues of eSports and how to deal with them in order to help companies operating in the market to better understand the issues that are arising and to which the eSports industry in some cases does not still have a good answer.
There are a number of copyright issues related to the choreography of an eSports game. In these days the first (and most important) regards the protection of choreographic elements (i.e. a dance) which could appear in videogames. In Europe and in the USA, a choreographic work is protected by copyright. This is why an extended series of dances moves that is original to its creator can be protected by copyright. The above explains the law suits recently filed in the USA at the end of 2018 by several individuals in connection with famous Fortnite videogame.
If you are not familiar with Fortnite, players can buy (or earn) emotes, short avatar animations who can replicate generic acrobatic moves and dances. The Fortnite Loser Dance (so called L Dance) become famous thanks to the French soccer player Griezmann, who used this theme after scoring in the last World Cup 2018 final against Croatia.
Publications sharing tips on how to complete videogames and maximise bonuses might increase with the expansion of the eSport competitions. The same applies to platforms streaming videogames alone or together with eSport actions of the various players. Yet are these activities possible without the right holders’ consent?
Under Italian law, videogames are protected as a whole as copyright works like movies, whilst their frames could be protected as simple photographies (with protection lasting 20 years from their publication). Following a different opinion, videogame frames could be excluded from protection, as they may considered similar to documents, as provided by Art. 87, last sentence of the Italian Copyright Law (ICL).
The Milan Fashion Week has just started and from today we are glad to host some highlights on the major fashion law trends of this season.
Heritage is one of the major assets a fashion company holds and the ultimate tendency of this Fashion Week is to revamp old creations from the maison’s archives.
Firstly, it should be assessed whether the fashion company can use its own archives. This seems to be a plain question, however, in practice, it could happen that, despite being the owner of the physical copies of sketches and preparatory works of certain garments or motifs, the company does not hold the IP rights over such creations of the past.
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