Textile Copyright Cases Ripe for ADR -

While normally focused on music and media matters, copyright lawyers in California have grown busy with something else: fabrics. Hundreds of textile copyright suits involving fabric prints are being filed in U.S. district courts every year, with the number climbing rapidly in the last five years, according to the Copyright Litigation Report by legal analytics company Lex Machina. In 2014, for example, four textile companies— including L.A. Printex, Star Fabrics, United Fabrics International and Unicolors, Inc.— brought 106 fabric copyright cases. These companies and other plaintiffs sue retailers over designs, patterns, layout, arrangement, style and images on fabric prints.

“You can’t copyright an article of clothing. Knockoffs are the way of the world in the garment business,” says Hon. Margaret A. Nagle (Ret.) of JAMS, who presided over hundreds of cases in the Central District of California, where many of these textile copyright cases are filed. “But you can copyright a two-dimensional print. Someone might look at fabric and say, ‘It’s just tulips. Can it be copyrightable?’ The answer is yes, it really can be. If the color and arrangement are strikingly similar and there’s a registered copyright, there’s trouble.” Nagle adds that these cases are being “very vigorously pursued.”