Independent Artist Claims Zara Is Ripping Off Designs From Her Online Store

We’ve seen it before, many times, and we’ll no doubt see it in the future: another independent artist is pointing the finger at a major retailer this week for allegedly ripping off designs from her online store to make its own products.

Illustrator Tuesday Bassen posted side-by-side comparisons of a few examples of her artwork from her store, Shop Tuesday, which she claims Zara stole from her to sell clothing patches:

She said that her lawyer contacted Zara, and the company said she has no basis for her claims because she’s “an indie artist and they’re a major corporation and that not enough people even know about me for it to matter,” Bassen wrote.

Her Instagram post includes the response she says she received from Zara, which says there is a “lack of distinctiveness” in her designs, which “makes it very hard to see how a significant part of the population anywhere in the world would associate the [designs] with Tuesday Bassen.”

Bassen adds that it’s disheartening to spend thousands of dollars on legal help “just to defend what is legally mine.”

After Bassen’s claims caught traction among her followers and spread on social media, Zara’s parent company, Inditex, told Buzzfeed News that it had been recently contacted by Bassen’s lawyers, who “noted the use of the illustrations in some badges sourced externally and on clothes in its Group stores.”

“Inditex respects any third party’s creativity and takes all claims concerning third party intellectual property rights very seriously,” the statement continues.

“On receiving these allegations, the relevant items were immediately suspended from sale and an investigation opened,” Inditex’s spokesperson said. “In parallel, Inditex’s legal team also contacted Tuesday Bassen’s lawyers to clarify and resolve the situation. Inditex has more than 600 designers in house that create more than 50,000 designs a year, it has the highest respect towards each individual’s creativity and will investigate this specific case to its end.”

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist