Chrome Hearts vs. MNML / Watch Tower Bible and their fight against infringement

Good morning everyone. We hope you will all have a very nice beginning of the month. For today’s weekly news:

Chrome Hearts vs. MNML

Chrome Hearts is an LA fashion company that filed for infringement against MNML a “fast fashion” (inexpensive clothes produced rapidly by mass-market retailers in response to the latest fashion trends) streetwear brand that made an alleged copy of its famous 7,000 $ jeans.

  On the left, Chrome Hearts jeans. On the right, MNML jeans.

According to Chrome, MNML used its well-known cross design on its jeans in an attempt to confuse the consumers as to the origin of the jeans. According to Chrome, the company has been using the cross as a trade mark for a little over 30 years now, building its brand and reputation around this trade mark. Because a lot of celebrities have been wearing Chrome’s apparel, Chrome considers that MNML new about the infringing nature of its action but they went away and made their own version of the jeans in order to reap the benefit of Chrome’s goodwill and reputation. Therefore, Chrome is claiming trade mark infringement and seeking monetary damages.

Watch Tower Bible and their fight against infringement

If you remember, we reported back in March on Watch Tower Bible (WTB) a Jehovah’s witness religious group, who filed for infringement against a Youtuber who uploaded sermons without the group’s authorization.

Well, now it is two journalists that created “Truth and Transparency” who are being targeted by the group for copyright infringement. Apparently, these two journalists posted the copyright protected literary works of WTB. This was back in November 2018, when WTB demanded the content to be taken down. T&T refused claiming fair use (US 4 step copyright exception). In May 2019, WTB learned that 74 motion pictures to which it holds copyright were uploaded to a platform called “RuTube” (apparently it is the Russian version of YouTube). The videos were taken down by RuTube after receiving a takedown notice but then re-uploaded by T&T on the same website where the literary works were already available. By uploading and making all this content available to the public, WTB considers that the two journalists behind T&T committed copyright infringement and are therefore seeking for the content to be taken down and damages for all the infringing content.

This is all we have for this week! Make sure to stay safe and healthy and keep coming back for more news!

Interesting readings:

• The making, branding, and (alleged) copying of a DTC Startup: Daily Harvest – The Fashion Law - https://www.thefashionlaw.com/the-making-branding-and-alleged-copying-of-a-dtc-startup-daily-harvest/