{"id":973526,"date":"2019-11-14T11:32:24","date_gmt":"2019-11-14T18:32:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=912527"},"modified":"2019-11-14T11:32:24","modified_gmt":"2019-11-14T18:32:24","slug":"judge-allows-nirvanas-lawsuit-against-marc-jacobs-to-proceed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/music-news\/judge-allows-nirvanas-lawsuit-against-marc-jacobs-to-proceed\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge Allows Nirvana\u2019s Lawsuit Against Marc Jacobs to Proceed"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A California judge has allowed Nirvana<\/a>\u2019s copyright infringement lawsuit against Marc Jacobs<\/a> to proceed, according to The Hollywood Reporter<\/i><\/a>. The lawsuit centers around a Marc Jacobs T-shirt, which the band says rips off their famous happy face logo.<\/p>\n

The shirt in question was part of Marc Jacobs\u2019 \u201cBootleg Redux Grunge\u201d collection and features what appears to be a version of Nirvana\u2019s asymmetrical smiley face logo. Instead of X\u2019s for eyes, however, it has the letters M and J. And above the smiley face, the word \u201cNirvana\u201d is replaced by the word \u201cHeaven,\u201d although it\u2019s printed in a type-face roughly similar to the one Nirvana used on their shirts.<\/p>\n

Nirvana filed their lawsuit<\/a> against Marc Jacobs last December, accusing the fashion line of copyright and trademark infringement, false designation of origin and unfair competition. The band also alleged that Marc Jacobs used the happy face logo to \u201cmislead the public into falsely believing that Nirvana endorses the entire \u2018Bootleg Redux Grunge\u2019 collection\u2026 when Nirvana has not done so.\u201d<\/p>\n

In March, Marc Jacobs filed a motion to dismiss<\/a> the complaint. While the motion acknowledged that the Marc Jacobs shirt was \u201cinspired by vintage Nirvana concert T-shirts from the 1990s,\u201d it argued their shirt was unique enough because the happy face was \u201creinterpreted\u201d to include Marc Jacobs branding (the M and J for eyes).<\/p>\n

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The motion to dismiss also hinged on various technicalities, such as: Nirvana didn\u2019t explain how or when Kurt Cobain (who created the design) transferred the rights to the band; that the copyright is invalid because the band didn\u2019t accurately list the design\u2019s first date of publication; and that Nirvana technically owns the copyright to a whole T-shirt with not just the happy face logo, but other text as well (such as the words \u201cflower sniffin kitty pettin baby kissin corporate rock whores\u201d).<\/p>\n

In his ruling, Judge John Kronstadt said none of those reasons were enough to justify a motion to dismiss, and that Nirvana\u2019s original complaint was sufficient enough to move forward. Kronstadt, for instance, wrote that the only \u201cdiscernible difference\u201d between the two shirts is the use of the letters M and J for eyes instead of X\u2019s.<\/p>\n

He also pointed out that the Marc Jacobs shirts \u201chave combined this protectable artwork [the happy face] with other distinctive elements of the Nirvana T-shirt, including through the use of yellow lines on black background and a similar type and placement for the text above the image on the clothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kronstadt also wrote that \u201cthe issue presented as to likelihood of confusion is not whether the marks are identical. It is whether they are sufficiently similar \u2018in their entirety\u2019 to make confusion likely\u2026 Whether a fact-finder may ultimately conclude that certain distinctions \u2018render the marks dissimilar\u2019 cannot be resolved through the motion.\u201d<\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A California judge has allowed Nirvana\u2019s copyright infringement lawsuit against Marc Jacobs to proceed, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The lawsuit centers around a Marc Jacobs T-shirt, which the band says rips off their famous happy face logo. The shirt in question was part of Marc Jacobs\u2019 \u201cBootleg Redux Grunge\u201d collection and features what appears […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-973526","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-13 16:30:12","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KFMU Solar Powered Radio","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=973526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973526\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=973526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=973526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=973526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}