In case you missed it, stylish singer Rihanna has just been announced the winner of an on-going legal battle against Topshop, following the brand’s decision to sell a T-shirt with her beautiful image, without permission.
Ever the trend-setter, the outcome of Ms Fenty’s victory over Topshop is the first of its kind in the history of English cases (the retailer being a British high street brand), with this marking the first time a celebrity has won compensation through the claus ‘passing off,’ which means ‘unauthorised used of a personal image.’
The Barbados babe had originally sued Topshop’s parent company Arcadia back in 2013, winning herself £3.3m in compensation over the T-shirts, which feature an image taken on the set of her 2011 “We Found Love” video shoot. But, as Topshop disputed the court’s initial decision in favour of the star, all parties were back in The Court of Appeal, where three judges agreed again that the retailer’s marketing of the item without Rihanna’s approval was in fact “passing off,” through which some shoppers “would have been deceived into buying the top because of a ‘false belief’ it had been approved by the singer,” as BBC News reported.
Topshop’s team and lawyers had previously argued that they had “no intention to create an appearance of an endorsement or promotion,” but as with Rih’s original suit against Arcadia, her team won the trial and Topshop are set to pay up.
While we’re sure Rihanna’s happy with her win over the high street brand, we at SPICE will breathe a saddened sigh for the Topshop x Rihanna collection collaboration that we don’t suppose we’ll see anytime soon…
Image source: Dazeddigital.com
