YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO MY IDEA

Ever since we know for ourselves, we fight against injustice, starting from the fact that we have earned more chocolate than our brother or sister to being always right. While growing up, we start to mature and form our own opinion. Through entire growing up, we gain a lot of knowledge and experience, which our mind considers ours. What happens when someone tries to take, borrow or steal from us the knowledge we have gained? How can we fight that? From the legal point of view, the entire creativity of a human mind can be called intellectual property and divided into industrial property (for example: patents, industrial designs, designation of origin) on one hand, and copyright and related rights, on the other.

In order to bring the way we fight FOR our rights closer, let us remind you about the case of the singer Ariana Grande who filed a lawsuit against the brand “Forever 21” in September 2019.

According to her lawyer, the brand user her name, personality and music in their campaign without authorization, using her character and deed, trying to gain financial profit. Essentially, the point is that the brand based its entire marketing campaign on her character and deed, which led to using the singer to gain money, logically, without paying anything. Interesting.

Also, Grande claims that even the model who acted in the campaign looked like her and that they use jewellery that looked like her. Apart from that, the singer’s lawyer claimed that the model was also photographed in the pose in which she had been photographed too, and that she looked like her in the video “7 rings”. The intention of “Forever 21”, according to the lawyer, was to suggest the public that Grande supported “Forever 21” and their products.

If we ask attorneys, this would be – appropriation of intellectual property of Grande. Apart from the stated, “Forever 21” posted on their social networks photographs of Ariana Grande without authorization, user her music and lyrics in their posts.

We are also witnesses of the example when the musician Josh Stone filed a lawsuit in which he claimed that beat, lyrics, rhythm and the narrative context of the trach “7 rings” essentially similar to the elements of his song “I Got It” from 2007. Before the lawsuit was filed, the song had had 640 million views on YouTube and gained the profit in the amount of 10 billion USD.

Link to the song I got it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1tJ90PcQKE

This is not the first example that the story about Ariana coping someone else’s work came to public. She was accused of copying the song “Spend It” by 2Chainz, the song “Mine” by Princess Nokia and “Pretty Boy Swag” by Soulja Boy.

No matter what, they have still not expressed the tendency to bring her to court for that. These two examples are interesting because the decision about whether she used the song “I Got It” would inevitably influence the outcome of her lawsuit against Forever 21, because if it is proven that she does not have the right to the song “7 rings”, there is nothing to be claimed from the stated brand. We believe that we face intellectual theft on daily basis, where Ariana’s case is just a part of the sea of copies. Professors at faculties use software to check plagiarism, numerous campaigns follow their products through work and verification of certain members of teams. There are even intellectual property offices. We have to understand that the entire planet if a large global village, and that with the slogan “find a solution, copy” we have not perfected by lowered the criteria for the future progress of ourselves and the entire society. Therefore, let us be the initiators for the justice for justice.