A federal appellate court has reversed a copyright infringement trial loss for clothing retailer H&M Hennes & Mauritz LP, finding that the district judge below erred in evaluating the company’s defense that textile designer Unicolors Inc. had included known inaccuracies in its application to register a copyright for the pattern at the center of the dispute. 

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Friday held that U.S. District Judge Andre Birotte Jr. of the Central District of California should have requested that the Register of Copyrights advise him as to whether Unicolor’s inclusion of inaccurate information would have caused the agency to refuse registration rather than making the determination himself in the first instance. The panel also found the Birotte erred in imposing an intent-to-defraud requirement for H&M to invalidate Unicolor’s registration.

This content has been archived. It is available through our partners, LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law.

To view this content, please continue to their sites.

Not a Lexis Subscriber?
Subscribe Now

Not a Bloomberg Law Subscriber?
Subscribe Now

Why am I seeing this?

LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law are third party online distributors of the broad collection of current and archived versions of ALM's legal news publications. LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law customers are able to access and use ALM's content, including content from the National Law Journal, The American Lawyer, Legaltech News, The New York Law Journal, and Corporate Counsel, as well as other sources of legal information.

For questions call 1-877-256-2472 or contact us at [email protected]