Claim No: IP-2022-000053 - [2025] EWHC 1827 (IPEC)

When pressed at trial, the Claimants’ counsel submitted that faces are not present in all Ms Martin’s work – but they are in all the evidence that is before me and are very prominent in the Work. For example, counsel for the Claimants submitted to me that faces were not prominently included in Ms Martin’s work for The North Face – this is clearly not right. The evidence shows the work submitted by Ms Martin which was used by The North Face to fabricate clothing and accessories, which clearly includes faces, as follows:

Faces are also apparent in The North Face garment as worn by Ms Martin in this image:

I did find two examples where a suite of works was prepared (one for Jose Cuervo, one a set of lithographs offered through Ms Martin’s website), where only 5 of the 6 pieces in each suite included faces. But taken as a suite of works, faces are included.

I have set out these comments on Ms Martin’s work more generally to deal with the issue only once – I return to my conclusions below in relation to passing off. To be clear, for the purposes of copyright infringement, I have considered only the Work: my review of the evidence of Ms Martin’s wider oeuvre relates to the passing off claim. It is clear to me that the Work, like Ms Martin’s work more generally, includes many humanoid faces. In the context of the Work, which was a large wall-drawing, some of the faces would have been a metre high. They are thus significant, and have, in my judgment, been overly downplayed in the Claimants’ copyright feature analysis.

I therefore reject the allegation of copyright infringement by the Second Label based on the feature analysis.

Reliance was also put on exact copying of what were described as “a number of Ms Martin’s distinctive features”, namely her:

Sixteen examples of these were provided in the Claimants’ opening written submissions, as follows: