Two foreign-owned jean-makers are in a New Zealand court fight where one alleges the other copied its design.
Dutch clothing company G-Star Raw, and one of its distributors, has alleged Australian company Jeanswest sold a style of pants that is a copy, or "substantial copy", of a design it owns the copyright for.
According to a claim G-Star has taken against Jeanswest Corporation New Zealand, a French designer working for the Amsterdam-based company came up with a style of jeans in 1995 known as the "Elwood 5620" design. G-Star says the Elwood design is a "signature product" and that at least 10 million garments featuring it have sold worldwide.
These Elwood jeans have "distinct design features" including oval-shaped knee pads, horizontal stitching running across the back of each knee, a straight line of double stitching coming from the hip to the crotch diagonally across the front of the thigh of each leg, a saddle pad of the back of the jeans and heel guards at the back of each leg.
G-Star's claim alleges that, with the exception of the saddle pad, a Jeanswest style called "Dean Biker Slim" contained these features.
