The 'We Found Love' hitmaker has won a legal battle against Topshop for using her photo on a T-shirt without her permission.
- Jan 23, 2015
AceShowbiz - Rihanna has won a two-year legal battle against Topshop over a T-shirt using her photo. On Thursday, January 22, the Court of Appeal in London upheld a ban on the store selling the T-shirt without obtaining her permission.
Three appeal judges unanimously agreed that selling the T-shirt without RiRi's permission was damaging to her brand. Lord Justice David Kitchin said, "People could be deceived into buying the T-shirt perhaps believing it was authorised by Rihanna. Topshop sold the T-shirt without Rihanna's approval and this amounted to passing off."
Back in 2013, RiRi sued Topshop's parent company Arcadia for $5.5 million over the T-Shirt which featured a photo of her taken by a freelance photographer in Northern Ireland during the filming of her "We Found Love" music video in 2011. The photo was similar to images included in the CD sleeve of RiRi's album "Talk That Talk" and her lawyer claimed the use of the image on an unauthorized T-shirt was deceptive to fans.
High Court Judge Justice Birss agreed and ruled that fans would be deceived into buying the T-shirt because of the "false belief" that RiRi had agreed to let Topshop use her image. Topshop's lawyer Geoffrey Hobbs QC later urged the three appeal judges to overturn Justice's decision, claiming that the judge "had misunderstood the law on celebrity merchandising."
Geoffrey argued in court there was a tradition of merchandising celebrity's images over the decades, including those of Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix and Prince. He suggested RiRi was using the law wrongly to claim that "only a celebrity may ever market his or her own character."
