Rihanna prevails in Topshop T-Shirt row

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Rihanna prevails in Topshop T-Shirt row

A UK court has ruled that clothing chain Topshop was guilty of passing off after it sold a T-Shirt emblazoned with an unauthorised image of singer Rihanna

The BBC reports that Mr Justice Birss made it clear in his ruling that there was 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,” he said.

But he ruled that in this case, Topshop’s sale of the T-Shirt, complete with a photo of the singer taken without her permission and originally marketed as the "Rihanna Tank", amounted to passing off.



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