Alexander Wang Hit with $75M-Plus Infringement Suit

A job applicant filed a $75M-plus lawsuit against fashion label Alexander Wang, alleging the company “willfully and flagrantly infringed” a series of her graphical works in a video advertisement. The suit states that the applicant submitted her portfolio as part of several job application processes, as well as for an online contest. After receiving praise for her designs from an Alexander Wang talent acquisition consultant, she did not hear back from the company and was not informed that her work would be used for any purpose other than to confidentially evaluate her qualifications for the open position. Intellectual Property Magazine interviewed Finnegan partner Margaret Esquenet for her thoughts on the case.  

Margaret said:

“It’s interesting that plaintiff pleads that she submitted the materials to Alexander Wang as part of a contest entry. Many contest rules require that entrants license or assign rights in their entries to the contest sponsor. If Alexander Wang can show that the contest rules included the relevant language and that plaintiff agreed to the rules, it may have a relatively easy defense without ever being required to address the merits of the claims. If the dispute is decided on the merits, however, it is likely that Alexander Wang will argue that the plaintiff is seeking to protect a particular artistic style or concept and not a specific expression. This defense was successful for Starbucks in Hayuk v Starbucks Corp., where under arguably similar facts the court dismissed Hayuk’s complaint, holding that copying an artistic style, elements, and ideas was insufficient to sustain a copyright infringement claim where there is no persuasive evidence of substantial similarity of the actual works at issue. Plaintiff will counter, however, that Alexander Wang did not merely copy an idea, but created an unauthorized infringing derivative of the specific works she submitted for the contest/job application. If the court agrees with the plaintiff that Alexander Wang simply converted her drawings to 3D figures for its videos, the court’s analysis in Hayuk will likely not save the day for Alexander Wang.”

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