The Supreme Court Looks at a Copyright Case Involving a H&M Sweater Pattern
Wading into an argument over whether H&M makes clothes that use copyrighted patterns without permission, the Supreme Court took up a Los Angeles fabric designer’s appeal on Tuesday.
Though a California jury had sided with Unicolors, awarding $850,000 in damages, the Sweden-based giant of the fast-fashion world won a Ninth Circuit reversal in May 2020. H&M says Unicolors lacks a valid copyright, having built its case on a registration for a group of 31 patterns. Since Unicolors has sold some of those patterns to individual customers, H&M says the copyright must be individual as well.
On remand, the Ninth Circuit says the District Court must determine whether the “known inaccuracies” contained in Unicolors’ copyright registration application would have caused the Register of Copyrights to refuse registration.
