Fashion Don't: Louis Vuitton Sues Darfur Fundraiser

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We're not lawyers over here, but file this under, are you trying to look like an asshole? Louis Vuitton is suing artist Nadia Plesner to the tune of $22,500 a day for creating the T-shirts and posters (shown above, featuring the Louis Vuitton-inspired handbag) to sell, with 100% of the profits going to Divest for Darfur. Plesner told TorrentFreak: "I started this campaign because of the distorted way the media prioritizes between big and small world news. How can Paris Hilton make more front covers than the genocide in Darfur? So, I 'pimped' a victim, to see if it worked. And it did!”

TorrentFreak reports that LV sent Plesner a friendly cease-and-desist letter in February, but when she wouldn't comply came on full-force with the lawsuit on April 15: "Louis Vuitton now demands $7,500 (5,000 Euro) for each day she continues to sell Simple Life products, $7,500 for each day their letter is published on the website and $7,500 a day for using the name 'Louis Vuitton' on her website. In addition they want her to pay their lawyer costs and $15,000 to cover other expenses they have incurred in protecting their ‘intellectual property’."

Plesner's lawyer, Intellectual Property expert and lawyer Hans Bousie, "told TorrentFreak that Nadia could exercise her right to freedom of expression, and her right to artistic freedom in particular. That is, if the design clearly resembles the original design, otherwise Louis Vuitton won't have a strong case to begin with." There's gotta be a better way for LV to negotiate this thing from a PR standpoint, what with the attention to greening everything and humanitarianism! Green is the new luxury commodity. What would Brad and Angie thing? WTF, LV, get it together!
· Louis Vuitton Sues Darfur Fundraiser for Copyright Infringement [TorrentFreak]