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Friday frivolity: Beyonce's pirated bikini

By Johanna Gibson, David Pearce, Jeremy Phillips and Ilanah Simon.

In what has to be one of the more bizarre copyright disputes, the underwear manufacturer Triumph sued Sony because Beyoncé was wearing copyright infringing underwear in her music video "Video Phone". Seriously.

The design in question by Bulgarian designer Iskren Lozanov is shown on the right, the music video below (the infringement occurs at about 0.50'). This week, the 7th Civil Chamber of the Landgericht Munich upheld an ex parte injunction barring Sony from distributing the "Video Phone" clip in Germany.

Triumph argued Beyoncé was wearing an unauthorized reproduction of the Iskren Lozanov design. Sony countered that both designs were inspired by Picasso, but otherwise, there were few similarities. The slips, in particular, were wholly different. The judge disagreed: the Lozanov design was highly original and enjoyed a wide scope of protection, and was therefore infringed by the underwear worn by Beyoncé.

Sony's lawyer announced that, after consultation with Beyoncé, he would most likely appeal the decision.

The IPKat thinks that studying the file for this case must have been more fun than your average pharma patent case. Merpel adds, if you weren't a cat, I'd call you a chauvinist pig.

German news article here

Full post as published by IPKat on February 12, 2010 (boomark / email).