urban outfitters vs johnny cupcakes

[dace]

so there's this kid from boston called johnny cupcakes. maybe you've heard of him, maybe not. maybe you've seen his stuff and think it's cheesey and lame, i have my own opinions about his actual design work but i'd like to leave that out of this thread as this is about an issue that could happen to any of the designers here. basically urban outfitters just put out a shirt that looks A LOT like one of johnny's shirts and he thinks that they stole the design from him, as the design was one of his samples that he sent them a year ago, as well as a design that was featured in nylon magazine.

i'm going to paste his post regarding this issue, i'd be interested to hear what you guys think about the legal aspects of this.

---------
ATTENTION


Urban Outfitters ripped off one of my shirts and is now selling it in some of their stores. They have a shirt with a jet dropping cupcakes(with a different color scheme),. Last year Urban wanted to carry my shirts & they had a few Johnny Cupcakes shirt samples I had sent them....the Jet dropping cupcakes being one of them. They never sent my samples back after I told them I didn't want to buisness with them

A friend of mine that works in an Urban Outfitters e-mailed me today, telling me that she thought they got Johnny Cupcakes shirts in.... except they had an "Urban Renewal" tag on the inside of em - which is Urban Outfitters notorious clothing line that rips off small, independant artists & designers from all around the world.

I am talking to a few lawyers next week to see if there's anything I can do. They may of changed the design around enough so that they can't get in trouble. Major bummer.


If you google "Urban Outfitters" and "Infringement" - you will find a couple hundred court cases about Urban Outfitters fucking over young/small designers & clothing lines. Urban outfitters makes 856 Miliion dollars a year. They put small shops out of business. They're the Wallmart/Hot Topic of clothing stores.

Below you will see the Red Jet t-shirt dropping cupcakes that I originally sent to them, as a sample, before I decided to keep my shirts out of Urban Outfitters. They KEPT my sample shirts, copied one of them so far, and is now mass producing them with their 'Urban Renewal' company name on the inside(the various webcam picas towards the bottom).

HOW CAN YOU HELP?

-Re-post this, spread the word, tell as many people as you can. This type of thing with Urban Outfitters ripping off smaller brands, has happened ALL the time! Well, thanks to TOM - we all now have MYSPACE and can communicate.

-Stop shopping at Urban Outfitters, there are pleanty of other independant shops & online stores.

-And you can purchase shirts from http://www.johnnycupcakes.com

thank you so much for your time, start spreading the news!

love,
Johnny Cupcakes

[danieldanger]

the real version is cute, the UO version looks terrible.

[asthma]

Suburban Outshitters

also, i like that rory gilmore is starting to look like a little slut.

[ewytt]

I agree.

[Dance Party]

urban outfitters is for suburban girls who totally love that new franz ferdinand video and dress 'retro' with their friends.

[RichieGoodtimes]

Are you really in any position to insult anyone?

[Dance Party]

who said i was insultin?
i dont like urban outfitters.

[RichieGoodtimes]

See whats funny is that when I think of Urban utfitters I think of you.

[piemel]

goddamn taggers

[Dance Party]

because you know me.