Zara and Amiri have settled their $3 million-plus legal battle centering on a pricey pair of biker-style jeans the Zara allegedly jacked from the burgeoning Los Angeles-based brand. The settlement comes almost a year after Amiri filed suit against Zara and its parent company Inditex in a federal court in California, arguing that the fast fashion giant was running afoul of federal trademark law by offering up a style of jeans bearing “obvious and overwhelming similarities” to its $1,150 MX2 jeans without ever “approaching [Amiri] for a license to use its trade dress or other of [its] intellectual property rights” in connection with its staple denim offering.
Specifically, Amiri – which got its start in 2014 under the watch of designer Mike Amiri – asserted in its January 2020 complaint (and in a subsequently amended one) that it maintains trademark rights in the configuration of “stretch denim, pleated leather panel detailing, zippered outside thigh pockets, zipper closures at the knee-line, and hand-distressed abrasions throughout” that makes up its MX2 jeans. The combination of design elements is “a prominent, well-known and famous indicator of the origin,” and “instantly recognizable” as coming from the Amiri brand – or in other words, Amiri claimed that the combination acts as a trademark, which Zara’s lookalike denim infringed, as consumers are likely to have been confused about the source of the Zara denim and/or its connection with Amiri.
Setting forth claims of trade dress infringement and dilution, and unfair competition, among others, Amiri alleged that beginning in December 2019, in an attempt to “capitalize on the goodwill, recognition and fame associated with the Amiri MX2 jeans,” Zara “blatantly [and] willfully” replicated them by way of its $50 Combination Skinny Jeans. Zara’s “lower-quality, knock-off” jeans replicate “virtually every discernible aspect” of the MX2 jeans, Amiri argued, claiming that the “serial infringer’s” lookalike jeans were “intended to emulate the AMIRI MX2 jeans” in nearly every respect, albeit at a much different price point.
Read more at Fashion Law Blog https://www.thefashionlaw.com/amiri-zara-settle-3-million-lawsuit-over-lookalike-biker-jeans/
