Edward
Bartender
- Messages
- 25,082
- Location
- London, UK
Nor me. The levle of wear on the Dustbowl is just nice (I'd dye it back to black if it ever got ott), but the likes of the blue-black goat Levis supplied for Aero to use making the original version of the Speedster back when, or the accelrated-wear teacore stuff DD has been using wouldn't be my choice. Great that they're out there for the folks who do want that, of course. All comes down to what you want: I want my jackets to look like I'm wearing a jacket made in 1948 in 1953, say, whereas there are guys who are into "vintage jackets" (as distinct from as pat of an overall vintage look), and they want something that will patina fast and extensively, because they're looking at seventy year old jackets that for whatever reason aren't something they can acquire and wear, and they want their jacket to look just like that seventy year old jacket. Horses for courses.
Aero haven't made any official comment on this; they may or may not have decided it's not worth it. You can't read anything into that with regards to the merit of the case, however.
The matter was raised in the criminal case and the court heard that Will had stolen patterns from Aero as well as having them copied. However, as copyright infringement in the way Will did it is a matter of civil law in the UK, to enforce their copyright, Aero would have had to have taken their case to civil court themselves. The UK is far and away the most expensive place in Europe to launch a court case, so it's not something to do lightly. As a general rule, the design of a jacket is not protected - clothes, in the view of the law, are merely utilitarian, and so lack the creativity to protect the look of something in copyright. This means that one jacket maker is perfectly within the law to buy an example of a 'new' design from another, reverse engineer it, and copy it stitch for stitch. As long as they don't infringe TM by passing it off as the original or giving it the same name in infringement of trademark (say, copying a Highwayman and then calling it the Highwayman - a name which Aero own as a trademark in the UK) they can't be touched. Had Will / AL / SB been smart, that's what they would have done. For whatever reason, Will instead chose to illictly acquire and copy Aero's patterns, on which the first of the AL branded range were based.
What copyright law does protect is the patterns - the rationale being that considerable time and effort have gone into creating these designs and graded patterns, and that the creator of those should be entitled to protect them from just being liften and copied by others. The standard for infringement of copyright law in the UK (including the Scottish jurisdiction) is that "a substantial part" is copied - so minor tweaks, here and there, won't be enough to distinguish it sufficiently; much the same as Franz Murnau, under German law, was sued into the ground over Nosferatu (Bram Stoker's widow refused to give him permission to make a film of Dracula, so Murnau thought he could go ahead and do it anyway, avoiding copyright problems, just by changing the names of the characters. He was wrong, and Mrs Stoker sued him into the ground.). I recall also that there was mention during the criminal case that Aero had had an expert analysis done of AL (as then were) jackets based on the Aero Highwayman patterns, which showed them to be identical. (Useful summary of UK law from government information here: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploa..._data/file/399646/Copyright_Notice_4-2015.pdf )
This all being the case, it looks like Aero would have had a fairly strong case, based on the facts as were made public during the criminal trial, so why no court action? Well, of course, as a matter of civil law it remains up to Aero to decide whether or not they wish to bring a case. As I have already mentioned, bringing a legal action in the UK can be cripplingly expensive; if there is doubt as to whether your opponent can afford to pay off your costs (which can run into the hundreds of thousands in protracted action), it can be risky. Nobody wants to have the pyrric victory of winning a case only to discover the loser can't pay it all back upfront, and the claimant therefore being in the position of being financially stuffed by that. This may or may not be part of Aero's thinking. It's also true that bringing a legal action is an immense strain on anyone - Aero have already been through that with the criminal case and may consider it just not worth the hassle. Further, a market analysis will usually come into these sorts of decisions. If Aero find that AL/SB have not dented the Aero market, then it is plausble they may decide that it's just not worth the expense and hassle of bringing a case against a business which ultimately has not proven to be a significant competitor.
Please note that I have no connection to Aero as anything other than a satisfied customer. The thoughts above are merely my professional opinion as an academic lawyer of some twenty years' experience, baed on the known facts of the case, and should not be read as any form of confirmation of Aero's position on the matter.
