Ariana Grande, international singer, and artist recently filed a complaint on an international fashion brand, Forever 21.
The reason being the fashion brand, hired a look-alike to Ariana to endorse their products.
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The world got a whiff of this as soon as Ms.Grande made her plea for suing Forever 21 public. The fact that Ariana is an international star, makes anything she endorses hold much value. In fact, Ariana herself asserted that her endorsing anything even on a single Instagram post is well into six figures in cost.
Forever 21, pushed the envelope a little too far on this. Apparently, while most of us may be thinking that hiring a look-alike is no harm, the model wore strikingly similar merchandise and headgear as Ariana in her 7 Rings album. Grande made it a point to single this out and show that the fashion brand has done something more on the lines of dirty marketing.
Rather than pay for that right as the law requires, Defendants simply stole it by launching a misleading campaign across its website and social media platforms primarily in January and February 2019,” continues the complaint. “The campaign capitalized on the concurrent success of Ms. Grande’s album Thank U, Next by publishing at least 30 unauthorized images and videos misappropriating Ms. Grande’s name, image, likeness, and music in order to create the false perception of her endorsement.
– Ariana Grande’s public complaint on Forever 21
Identity theft and dirty marketing
If you look closely at the ictures of the model in Forever 21’s campaign you’ll be able to spot the familiar lookingtop that Ariana has actually worn on numerous occasions and the model even goes on to strike a signature poseof Ariana in the picture.
This act of Forever 21 seems to fall closely under identity theft or rather false endorsement. The hit internation pop star, is being representing legally by legal bigfish, Daniel Petrocelli at O’Melveney.
He states clearly that Forever 21’s false endorsement of Ariana Grande’s public brand is a violation of California’s right of publicity statute, false endorsement under the Lanham Act, trademark infringement and copyright infringement.
Well in all honesty, it’s true that what Forever 21 has done is wrong. Ariana Grande is a reputed singer who has soent years and years of toil andhardowrk into making herself the popstar and icon that she is today.
No amount of money can compensate for that, yet, in the legal complaint, the singer has demanded a clean $10 million in damamge costs from Forever 21.
Here’s where you can see the full complaint.
In fact, this is eerily similar to what happened to Kim Kardashian a few years ago. The hit realoity tv star sued The Gap for using a look alike to imitate her in endorsing their products. The case then proceeded aggressively into finding out the dsamages cost to Kim due to this infringement of identity and star status after which it was settled.
While Ariana has not yet responded to any requests for comments on this matter, look’s like this is going to cost Forever 21 a heavy price.
Featured image courtesy: TMZ
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