Rihanna live at Bankatlantic Center, Sunrise, Florida, on her tour The LOUD Tour (2011). Image courtesy Marc Schiller (Wikimedia commons).
Rihanna has won her legal battle against Topshop.
The 25-year-old singer has successfully sued the high street chain’s parent company Arcadia for R49.39 million over using an ”unflattering” image of her on their T-shirts without her consent, which was taken during her ‘We Found Love’ music video shoot in 2011 and showed her with her hair tied up in a bandanna.
In a hearing this morning at London’s High Court, it was ruled the fashion retailer duped fans and may have damaged her reputation.
In a two-minute statement, Judge Mr. Justice Bliss said in a two-minute judgement: ”There is no such thing as a general right by a famous person to control the reproduction of their image.
”The mere sale by a trader of a T-shirt bearing an image of a famous person is not an act of passing off. However, I find that Topshop’s sale of this T-shirt was an act of passing off.”
He added that a ”substantial number” of fans could have been deceived into buying it, thinking it was approved by the pop star which was damaging to her ”goodwill” and was a loss of control of her reputation in the fashion world.
Tophsop’s lawyers previously disputed the claims, saying the 25-year-old megastar was making an unjustifiable attempt to establish a ”free-standing image right” over use of her picture in the UK.
Rihanna previously took offence to the ”low-quality image” and also slammed the quality of the garments as ”poor”.
– TEAMtalk Media