Pacific Bird Was Reported By Visual Artist Joshua Vides For Suspected Plagiarism

　
On July 16, Joshua vides accused peacebird men's wear of producing and selling products bearing his name without authorization on his instagram.
It is worth mentioning that the screenshots of the chat records released by Joshua with the official account number of Pacific bird men's clothing show that the latter said directly in response to Joshua's accusation, "you mentioned the issue of money, so how much do you need?"
On July 17, Pacific bird men's wear responded that the screenshots of chatting records released by Joshua were incomplete, untrue and inaccurate, which had seriously violated the reputation right of Pacific bird. In addition, the cooperation project between the company and Joshua is based on the joint designer contract signed with his personal studio.
In response, some netizens combed the incident and said that it was Pacific bird who contacted Joshua's studio to purchase three designs (for clothing) in November 2020, and Joshua repeatedly confirmed with Pacific bird that it was not named after himself, but in the name of the studio. As a result, Pacific bird not only used these three "soleplates" to forge a series of designs of this style, but also named it after Joshua himself.
Liu Bin, a lawyer with Beijing Zhongwen law firm, told radar finance that China's laws also protect the copyright works of foreign illustrators, and that the behavior of taipingniao may constitute an infringement on its right to spread information on the Internet. However, compared with ordinary intellectual property infringement cases, the trial period of foreign-related cases is longer, and the requirements for evidence are higher. Therefore, the settlement of payment of fees is indeed an effective solution to eliminate the burden of litigation of both parties.
Radar financial analysis found that before Joshua, taipingniao had been involved in plagiarism for many times.
In this regard, some analysts believe that taipingniao defines itself as a fast fashion "national trend", and its turnover speed is fast, which leads to the compression of design cycle, so that the "reference" is not good, which leads to frequent "bombardment" of the company on the social platform.
　 Accused of infringement, taipingniao said it was seriously infringed on its right of reputation
"Taipingniao is really exaggerating." on July 16, a netizen carried the instagram content of foreign illustrator Joshua to microblog.
In 2018, Joshua vides' shoes transformed with the style of two-dimensional comics spread wildly on instagram and other platforms, which made it famous. In addition to sneakers, Joshua used similar techniques to make black-and-white comics spread all over basketball, skateboards, Honda NSX sports cars and other objects, even basketball court, airplane cabin, Wedding Church and other space places.
The unique style also gives Joshua the opportunity to co brand with many famous brands, including converse, Mercedes Benz, Fendi and other brands have extended olive branches to Joshua.
In March 2021, the avid Pacific bird also targeted Joshua. It is reported that there are a large number of black and white cartoons of Joshua's highly recognizable black-and-white comics in the trilateral co branded series of products jointly produced by Pacific bird men's clothing, American Comedy Animation "Rick and modi" and Joshua. In addition, taipingniao men's wear has also opened an offline exhibition in Shanghai Yuyuan Road FIU Gallery, displaying a large number of works of art with Joshua's name on display.
However, Joshua recently accused instagram that "Pacific bird has been making illegal production and bad secondary creations, printing my name on merchandise without my permission."
The screenshot of the conversation with the official account number of Pacific bird men's wear shows that Pacific bird men's wear shows great respect for Joshua and hopes to solve the problem through communication. At the same time, in response to Joshua's accusation that "you have printed my name on the product", Pacific bird men's wear said, "you need to calm down, we have not printed your name on the product".
"I have about 50 pictures of your products with my name printed, including individuals, videos, e-mails, and so on. I have also got the concrete objects." Joshua said. "You mentioned the money, OK, how much do you need?"
On July 17, the Pacific bird men's wear issued a statement in response to the hot debate about plagiarism“ Mr. Joshua vides' influence in the field of fashion and creativity in the field of art are unanimously recognized and fully reflected in this cooperation project. "
Taipingniao men's wear stressed: "the cooperation project between our company and Mr. Joshua vides is based on the joint designer contract signed with his personal studio reality to idea LLC, and the contract is signed by Joshua vides; The screenshots of chatting records released by Joshua vides are incomplete, untrue and inaccurate, which has seriously violated the reputation right of Taiping bird. "
Despite this, there are still a large number of netizens for the taipingniao said not to buy. Some netizens combed the incident and said that it was Pacific bird who contacted Joshua's studio to purchase three designs (for clothing) in November 2020, and Joshua repeatedly confirmed with Pacific bird that it was not named after himself, but in the name of the studio. As a result, Pacific bird not only used these three "soleplates" to forge a series of designs of this style, but also named it after Joshua himself.
According to this, radar finance tried to call taipingbird Group Co., Ltd. and the office of taipingniao's Director Secretary, but they were unable to get through after many times of dialing. After the paper was sent to taipingniao men's clothing, no reply was received up to the time of publication.
　　 Lawyer: if the artist's accusation is true, Pacific bird is suspected of violating the right of information network dissemination
According to China's "copyright law", the copyright of the works of foreigners and stateless persons under the agreements signed between the country to which the author belongs or the country of their habitual residence and China, or the international treaties to which both countries are parties, are protected by this law. China acceded to the Berne Convention for the protection of literary and artistic works (hereinafter referred to as "the Convention") in 1992, China's law also protects the copyright works of foreign illustrators.
Liu Bin, a lawyer, believes that if foreign illustrators enjoy the copyright of the illustration works involved in the case, the behavior of taipingniao constitutes an infringement on its right of information network dissemination.
Specifically, the right of information network dissemination refers to the right to provide the public with wired or wireless means, so that the public can obtain works at the time and place they choose.
Liu Bin said that although there is little difference in the final judgment of the court, there is a big difference in the judicial process of quoting domestic or foreign works without authorization.
"If the foreign illustrator is the copyright owner, and the right protection litigation brought by the foreign illustrator has foreign-related factors (i.e., one party's foreign-related factors), the case belongs to the foreign-related case according to the relevant provisions of the civil procedure law. Compared with ordinary intellectual property infringement cases without foreign factors, the trial period of foreign-related cases is longer and the requirements for evidence are higher. Therefore, it can be said that transnational litigation will be more difficult. "
However, there are still some doubts in this case. Liu Bin pointed out that the first thing we need to do is to verify the authenticity of the chat records and whether there are false statements. Secondly, taipingniao wants to solve the problem by paying the other party, which is also a conventional solution to intellectual property disputes.
"Both parties can negotiate to determine the amount of compensation for the previous use of the work. At the same time, if Pacific bird wants to continue to use the work, it can also negotiate with the copyright owner of the work the license fee for subsequent use. In this way, transnational litigation can be avoided and litigation burden of all parties can be relieved. "
It is worth mentioning that, according to the interface fashion report on July 16, the tripartite co branded series of X Rick and Morty x Joshua vides is still on sale in tmall stores of Pacific bird men's wear, involving 17 items, including a T-shirt with a price of 276 yuan, which has a monthly sales volume of more than 600 yuan.
However, on July 17, radar finance once again searched the taipingniao men's clothing tmall store, and only the related products co branded by taipingniao and Rick modi could be found, and the three-party joint brand series could not be found.
　　 Taipingniao has caught hold of the fast fashion trend and has repeatedly fallen into the dispute of "plagiarism"
Radar finance and economics noted that before this, Taiping bird had been involved in plagiarism for many times.
Taipingniao was born in Ningbo, so it is regarded as the representative of "yongpai clothing". In 1996, when Zhang Jiangping founded the taipingniao brand, Shanshan Co., Ltd., also known as yongpai clothing, had just become the "first stock of Chinese clothing". Two years later, Youngor of Yongzhi group also successfully landed in the capital market.
Compared with the two predecessors, the Taiping bird started much later. Therefore, Zhang Jiangping adopted the development mode of dislocation competition, avoided the strong point of yongpai clothing "men's formal wear", and turned to enter the "men's leisure" track. Later, in the face of the "Fujian ten tigers" siege, Zhang Zhengping again avoided its edge and added women's clothing product line, which also laid the foundation for the company's listing.
Looking at the data of the annual report, we can see that taipingniao ushered in ＂ around ＂ 2014. Not only did its revenue grow at a rate of 1 billion per year, but also its net ＂ value doubled for two consecutive years, reaching 536 million yuan in 2015. For comparison, in the following years, the company's net return to parent company experienced ups and downs, reaching 552 million yuan in 2019, almost the same as four years ago.
Taipingniao's listing time is 2017. What did the company do right on the eve of its listing?
During that time, fast fashion brands headed by H & M and Zara swept the world. One sign is that Zara's owner surpassed Warren Buffett in 2012 to become the third richest person in the world. Taipingniao is the first apparel company in China to cooperate with Zara in depth. The company even defines itself as the Chinese version of Zara.
In 2014, taipingniao carried out the reform with great fanfare, and the brand style was completely new, and the logo was redesigned accordingly. In 2015, taipingniao defined itself as the "national tide", aiming at the younger route, and began to invite many traffic stars to speak for themselves. Yibu Qianxi, Wang Yibo, Huang Zitao and others were all taipingbird platforms.
But almost at the same time, taipingniao's "imitation" of international brands began to be widely discussed.
After the launch of taipingniao in 2017, a fashion commentator said frankly, "the show style copied the design of the smallest number in the industry, and the store relied on selling different styles to make its performance, and the brand and human setup was out of line."
In 2020, when Pacific bird co signed with Harry Potter, it was revealed that it was "learning from" the Korean brand unalloyed. At the same time, some netizens have shown that the style of taipingniao's clothes is highly similar to the hot Moussy, offwhite and a series of national brands. However, the birds did not respond to the charges.
Similar to the Joshua incident, on February 6, 2021, artist Xie Gu once posted a micro blog, saying that in the project jointly signed by taipingniao, Dali Temple journal and Li cansen, there were videos and illustrations plagiarizing his own works. After discovering the plagiarism, he asked taipingbird men's clothes to apologize and delete relevant contents, but the communication failed.
Or to speed up the turnover speed to reduce the design time
Industry analysts believe that taipingniao's positioning and market strategy have helped it achieve rapid sales growth, and accumulated certain popularity in the market, but these may also be the important reasons for its frequent "imitation".
"More models, less sales per model" is a distinctive feature of many brands in the field of Pacific bird and fast fashion.
From June to August 2020, Yinma Shuyan, an investment and research platform, monitored the flagship store of taipingniao women's wear tmall. The results showed that there were more than 1740 new models of shops each month, and the average number of SKUs on sale exceeded 6000.
According to ecdataway dataway, in December 2020, the top 20% of the monthly sales of taipingbird women's tmall flagship stores accounted for more than 75% of the sales. The monthly sales volume of the most popular knitwear in the store was 10562, but the monthly sales of 52 knitwear were less than 5.
In order to improve the new speed of products and expand SKU as much as possible, taipingniao has thought of many ways, "co branding" is a very effective one. According to incomplete statistics of the media, in 2020 alone, taipingniao launched more than 50 IP co branding series. The co branding objects include cat and mouse, cherry ball, Hua Mulan and other animation and film IP, leap and red double happiness and other national tide IP.
Cheng Weixiong, a brand management expert in the shoe and clothing industry and general manager of Shanghai Liangqi Brand Management Co., Ltd., said that the co branding strategy itself is a process of mutual blessing, and it is also the demand of young users. Taipingniao can see this point and constantly increase the co branding efforts.
It's fast to put on the shelf and fast to get off the shelf. In order to speed up the turnover, taipingniao may often take a large number of non salable items off the shelves, which will reduce the design cycle. In addition, the lack of "imitation level" of the design team will lead to frequent "shelling" of the company on the social platform.
Industry insiders point out that, fundamentally, the design that can truly attract consumers will never simply be based on data analysis and catch-up trends. If taipingniao wants to achieve more long-term development, rather than being a flash in the pan "net red", it also needs to have a more solid style and establish a matching supply chain system.