About supermarkets using the designs of others

[diabolicaldevil]

I have seen on Instagram that there's a campaign to make a major supermarket stop using the design of a "small brand"

I really feel for these brands but they're charging £36 for a jumper for a 3 year old and I feel like where people can buy the cheaper option then there will always be a market for it.

Let me be clear though, I don't think it's right to use the designs of other companies and not compensate them for doing so I just think that these "small brands" as they're always referred to on social media are pricing themselves way beyond what many people can afford

In my opinion £36 for a jumper for a three year old does strike me as excessive and is certainly out of my price range. There are people who will probably try to buy the Asda version now they've seen the article (though I do think the Asda one looks cheap and nasty). To be honest what parent who would otherwise have forked out £36 on a jumper for a three year old would change their mind and get it from Asda instead? She should have kept quiet and not drawn attention to it - the Asda design would soon have been forgotten about. Although I suppose this does also draw attention to her own brand and people will probably visit her website. I'd never heard of the brand until I saw this thread.

Asda is shit, no one should shop in there anyway. Their own brand stuff is rank.

ikeep - I wasn't being bitchy thanks very much, a PP said how awful it was that a company had spent hours of design and skill and all their effort had been ripped off. I was pointing out that hadn't happened.

Sorry busy Saturday!

I don't condone ripping off people's designs but I do tend to agree with a PP that trademarking words is a bit off.

How? Slogans are trademarked all the time?

YABVU.

They are not pricing themselves out, it’s the market that’s doing it for them.
They probably can not afford to sell it for less.

If you use the phrase on the Asda top to search for the trademark no results are returned as the trademarked phrase uses superhero whilst the Asda top uses super hero

It's shitty when something like this happens. An Irish cartoonist has a similar issue, although I don't know about copyright. twitter.com/twisteddoodles/status/956593001622654976

obviously the slogan is the same - but the design is very different? different items of clothing, and style?

The slogan isn’t trademarked so I fail to see how Asda are in the wrong.

Words shouldn’t be trademarked anyway

The slogan is trademarked, but only if you use the words superhero together not super hero

trademarks.ipo.gov.uk/ipo-tmcase/page/Results/1/UK00003179471

Don't know enough to know whether super hero as two words gets round the trademark or not

But it could be argued that the phrase with super hero as two separate words doesn't show up as trademarked so someone else using the slogan wouldn't be aware of it.

The fact is they've used a similar/identical phrase for identical goods. That = trade mark infringement. Not ok, and whoever signed off on the product at ASDA is an idiot.

Soulrider - the space wouldn't make a difference. The person searching the trademark register can use the "search string" facility which ignores spaces etc.

Price & affordability isn’t relevant. Big brands do this all the time particularly Zara. However as a pp stated copyright is indeed a very grey area.

That is really shitty of Asda. I hope the brand will benefit from the PR.

I follow Scamp and Dude on Instagram and love the woman behind it. No, I can’t necessarily spend £36 on a jumper for DS, but I did ask for an adult jumper for my birthday and am very happy with it. I keep an eye out for sales as well.

Her business does a fair bit for charity and she has a lot of supporters, lots of whom are ‘influencers’ and I hope she gets the results she wants.

Had a look through the line ...it's not great ...nice reason behind the creation .

You'd be surprised how many phrases are trademarked. Pixie Dust, Girl Boss, Miss to Mrs and loads more that you would think were just common words and sayings.

I too would never have known this was a trademarked phrase and I hate that phrases that are not particularly unique sounding should be able to be trademarked. However, Asda designers should be checking these things I guess even if I think it’s fundamentally wrong.