Courtesy of: http://ek5obition.com/Blog
ARTICLE VIA Strictly Fitteds
Continuing with our report on bootlegging in the genre of fitted baseball caps, we have a interview with JASON MAGGIO of OFFIClAL®. Recently the San Francisco based hat and cap company was hit by a harsh case of copyright infringement that borders on corperate identity theft.
SF: This is a very complicated situation. Can you explain to our audience what led up to this?
O: In the summer of 2007 we debuted the Official brand to Europe at the Bread and Butter Barcelona trade show. There was a great response to the styles we showcased. The show was mad crowded and there was a steady stream of show goers snapping digital images of our booth. Unfortunately we were not able to monitor and regulate all the digital cameras pointed our way and to our disgust one year later, we’ve discovered what the lack of that regulation could cost us. European mega-retailer C&A blatantly ripped off our name, trademarks and designs for two styles in their Summer ‘08 “Clockhouse” line.
SF: You are based in San Francisco. How did you first become aware of this situation?
O: In April of this year we received an email from an Official fan in Spain claiming they saw some hats in C&A that looked spot on like Official hats that came out in 2007. He sent images the next day of the mannequins in the front windows of the store rocking what, to our amazement, were exact replicas of two styles called Southampton and Neu Pescadore.
Even more appalling was the fact that these hats had our “O” logo the embroidered around the eyelet. The bootlegs that were produced by C&A , but had our logo embroidered on their hats! We simply couldn’t believe the level of outright theft. We requested that our new friend in Spain purchase several of these hats at C&A and send them two us.
We received a box a week later. Opening the box was like retrieving your car back from the impound yard after it’s been stolen. Everyone in the office was astonished with what we saw. C&A made an incredible effort to replicate our hats, halfway-emulating every detail and feature we originally conceptualized. This went all the way down to re-produced the fabrics we used. In lay-mans terms, this means they had to have produced a minimum of 1000 yards of custom fabric. That is the equivalent of 12,000 fake hats. In our original production run, we only used 40 yards of fabric.
SF: What was your first reaction?
O: To say the least, the rest of the day was a marathon of emails to our attorney and trying to develop a strategy to put a stop to this thievery.
SF: What was your Attorney’s take on the situation?
O: A day after the box came our attorney gave us a call after reviewing the situation and delivered the hard fact of the limitations with OFFICIAL being a small business. C&A is a multinational, billion dollar corporation. In short, this meant that they can steal, jack, rip-off the small creative struggle with no regard or remorse. In reality, there are very few legal options battling against a corperate giant with deep pockets and squads of lawyers on retainer. It was either hire an EU attorney with what we had allotted for our seasonal budget and go into a multi-year battle or focus on making more hats and live with the fact that a slimey, unscrupulous retail chain copied us lock- stock and barrel.
SF: What is your strategy for moving forward?
O: After relaying our situation to several business associates, we’ve been encouraged to fight back, by exposing C&A. The impact of push is dependent fans of Official and the Strictly Fitteds audience participating with us. We are encouraging a boycott of all C&A products, until they 1. Cease and desist using OFFICIAL’s trade marks and designs 2. Write a public apology letter to all Official customers for stealing the designs and attempting to pull the wool over their eyes. and lastly 3. Actually return a call from Official regarding this matter to settle the situation fairly in the eyes of Official Crown of Laurel. You can email C&A and relay your disgust of their design stealing practices here: service@C-and-A.com
If you are another form of media please repost/reprint this story. We have to protect the entities we cover and appreciate or these corporate behemoths will continue to steal every drop of creativity and originality they can without ever paying for the theft.
Shout outs to Jason and the whole Official camp, we hope they get things sorted out and keep the beautiful struggle goin.
1 comments:
This stuff is outdated.
After C&A got aware of the accusations, we have immidiately taken up contact with Official and apologized for the matter. Caps have been provided to us by a third party supplier in breach of contract and C&A copyright policy, while we were not aware of the fact that they were not their own style. We have found an agreement with Jason Maggio from Official in the mean time.
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