Entertainment
Harry Styles sues online sellers of fake merchandise in a sign of the times-Kitty Chrisp-Entertainment – Metro
Hopefully it won’t stay As It Was.
Styles is one of many brands and artists hitting back at unauthorised online sellers (Picture: Joseph Okpako/WireImage)
Harry Styles has had it with online crooks pretending to sell his official merchandise online, so he’s taking them to court.
The One Direction star filed legal action against specific URLs – as opposed to real people and named operations – that are flogging fake Harry Styles merch on established marketplaces like Amazon and Etsy.
The 28-year-old superstar is just one of many artists and brands trying to protect fans and consumers against unauthorised sellers, in an effort to combat knockoff products being bought and sold online.
The most recent case was that of Johanna Donnelly, who was ordered to pay £140,000 to compensate for the tasty £250,000 profit she made selling counterfeit music t-shirts online over a three-year period.
Donnelly operated under a fake company name and worked through eBay as well as her own website selling unofficial music merchandise, pretending to be bands including The Stone Roses and the Foo Fighters.
Harry is taking one for the team and putting his foot down (Picture: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Harry Styles)
It’s not clear who Harry is suing in particular, but detailing the specific sellers would undermine the legal action.
The star’s lawyers explained: ‘If defendants were to learn of these proceedings prematurely, the likely result would be the destruction of relevant documentary evidence and the hiding or transferring of assets to foreign jurisdictions.’
As Billboard reported, the lawsuit stated: ‘Plaintiff is forced to file this action to combat defendants’ counterfeiting of its registered trademarks, as well as to protect unknowing consumers from purchasing counterfeit products over the Internet.’
The singer is currently in the middle of his mammoth run of shows in Love On Tour (Picture: Handout/Helene Marie Pambrun via Getty Images)
The lawsuit went on to say that tactics used by defendants to hide their identities and the full scope of their operation make it ‘virtually impossibly’ for plaintiffs to discover identities and the full scale of the situation.
It also acknowledged that most of the items under question are from sellers based largely in ‘foreign jurisdictions with lax trademark enforcement system’ – or in layman’s terms, abroad.
As for the items themselves, the lawsuit said they make it ‘difficult for consumers to distinguish such stores from an authorised retailer’.
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The singer’s lawyers requested the items from unauthorised vendors be taken down.
Targeting specific sites rather than individual vendors is a legal tactic recently put to use by brands like Nike and Ray-Ban, and if successful could help bring down some big operations for good.
Or, failing that, it will stay As It Was – but for now, a ruling is yet to be made.
Metro.co.uk has contacted Harry Styles for a comment.
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