Fashion & Design protection Association

 

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

 

Contact: Craig Passmore

 

a:       The Fashion & Design Protection Association

          25 Watson’s Road

London

N22 7TZ

 

t:       020 8888 1213

f:       020 8889 8736

e:       info@fdpa.co.uk

w:      www.fdpa.co.uk

 

FDPA Press Release

 

Designers Wake Up!

 

Identical copies of designer merchandise are now readily appearing on the high street and the high street is boasting about it. Now supermarkets like Tesco’s with their Florence + Fred range are featured in double page spreads in the Daily Mail (Daily Mail 14 May p48-49) showing how they have copied Marc Jacobs £1000 dress and selling it at £45, Chloe’s £1700 dress and belt and selling it at £60 and Yves Saint Laurent’s £1440 dress and selling it for £50!

 

Designers used to say being copied is the greatest form of flattery. Not in today’s mass market as when you are copied by a multiple retailer who is selling thousands and thousands of copies of your design and reaping the profit you should be making, are you still flattered?

 

The FDPA called over 100 London designers and fashion houses and were astonished to learn that most of them hated being copied but felt there was nothing they could do about it.

 

Please be enlightened. The Law is very clear and strong in this area and it does and will protect you if you ask it to.

 

The FDPA was set up in 1974 when there was no law protecting fashion designs. It rallied the trade into its Association, lobbied Parliament and the Courts with trial actions until it was instrumental in changing the law so that fashion designs are now fully protected.

 

The prevailing ignorance amongst our designers has prompted the FDPA to re-launch itself and make the frustrated designer realise he can be reaping huge royalties from these multiples or from anyone who copies his work.

 

# # #

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

 

Contact: Craig Passmore

 

a:       The Fashion & Design Protection Association

          25 Watson’s Road

London

N22 7TZ

 

t:       020 8888 1213

f:       020 8889 8736

e:       info@fdpa.co.uk

w:      www.fdpa.co.uk

 

FDPA Press Release

 

FDPA Successes

 

The FDPA has won cases for clients against numerous major high street retailers and mail order companies, which, due to settlements being made under confidentiality, cannot be publicly named.

 

There are few cases to publish due to confidentiality agreements when cases are settled and due to the fact that 99% of cases are settled out of court because one party is always lying!

 

Some of our previous successes include, in the eighties one of our members got £22,000 in compensation from a multiple and all he wanted was for the offending garments to be withdrawn! However, the FDPA got him £22,000 damages and the withdrawal of the garments from the sales floor within 48 hours with no court action. After that the multiple started buying from our member.

 

Also in the late eighties, another client who was a regular supplier to one of the UK’s biggest mail order companies found that they were ordering about 500 units per style from him but were buying copies for all the repeat business from the Far East which came to an extra 2000-4000 units per style. This was business he was not seeing. Together with FDPA advice he sued and received over £1,000,000 damages.

 

In the early nineties a young British designer who was copied by a multiple retailer was offered £10,000 compensation and a job, offended she turned it down and came to the FDPA for advice. With FDPA advice, she subsequently won £176,000 damages and during her legal battle, when she ran out of money, the FDPA wrote to 100 of its members and raised the legal fees for her. The other side then quickly surrendered and paid up.

 

Other FDPA members such as Dollargrand and Gina Shoes have all recently won actions for infringement.

 

Our signature case was in 1980, when the leading case in damages, John Bernstein (T/A Herschelle) v Sidney Murray (T/A Peepers), was decided with our own Chairman helping the court as an expert witness..

 

John Bernstein, an FDPA member, won Conversion damages for copyright infringement totalling over £30,000 and was awarded his costs another £30,000.

 

This case changed the law by establishing copyright in a dress design and awarding for the first time Conversion damages for copyright infringement of a fashion design.

 

Now with lost profit damages instead of Conversion damages, it is not so penal against the copyist, so copying is becoming rife again.

 

But now the FDPA is crying out its message again to our talented original designers! If you don’t like being copied then stop it!

 

Join the FDPA – we show you how.

 

Fashio