Rihanna Fenty Case Essay

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Having established that the U.K. offers celebrities extremely limited rights over the use and distribution of their image for commercial purposes, and that case law indicates that the tort of passing off is applied on a somewhat unclear and inconsistent basis, the 2013 case of Robyn Rihanna Fenty and others -v- Arcadia Group Brands Limited acted as a landmark case with regards to publicity rights and the tort of passing off. (i) The Facts, Judgement and Effect Robyn Rihanna Fenty, most commonly known as the pop star Rihanna, brought proceedings against Arcadia Group Brands LTD (Topshop) over their use of her image on a T-shirt (see appendix one) that they produced without seeking Rihanna’s permission prior to use. The image in question had been taken by an independent …show more content…

Birss J held that Rihanna is “style icon by many people, predominantly young females aged between about 13 and 30” and as a result, these people are extremely interested in what she views as stylish. By holding contracts with fashion outlets such as H&M and River Island, including her own fashion brand, it was clear to Justice Birss that Rihanna has ‘ample goodwill to succeed in a passing off action.’ The main issue however, was in relation to the misrepresentation aspect of the claim. Birss J stressed that a critical issue in cases of this type is to identify the differentiation between the two separate reasons why a customer might wish to purchase the garment in question; as he explained in paragraph [35]: "If when they buy the t-shirt, they simply wish to buy an image of the pop star, then no misrepresentation has taken place. Merely recognising that the image is an image of the celebrity can never be sufficient to make the claimant's case. For passing off to succeed there must be a misrepresentation about trade

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