14 DAY TRIAL // Artist Nadia Plesner has managed to incur the wrath of Louis Vuitton once more with one of her paintings. She’s been sued and has to pay, as of now, over €305,000 for copyright infringement – but she’s determined not to go down without a fight.
Plesner first came to the attention of the French luxury brand with a painting called “Simple Living,” which showed a malnourished black boy holding what looked like a designer dog (a Chihuahua) and a lookalike LV bag.
Vuitton sued her, but the case was dropped when she agreed to stop selling merchandise with the boy and the bag.
Since then, she’s created a new piece called “Darfurnica” meant to raise awareness and money for the situation in Darfur, and it includes the same boy with the bag as “Simple Life.”
Quite stealthily, Louis Vuitton took Plesner to court again and got a judge to grant them €5,000 in damages for each day she has “Darfurnica” up on her website: so far, she’s over €305,000 in debt to the fashion house.
The only problem is, Plesner says on her website, her art shouldn’t be liable of copyright infringement claims, particularly now that she’s not making a profit off it.
Moreover, she should at least have been given the chance to respond, which she wasn’t. In fact, she didn’t know about the lawsuit until it was over and she was ordered to pay.
“The story about Darfur must be told, and I believe I should have my artistic freedom of speech to do so,” the artist says in a post on her website, explaining the latest legal mess she found herself in.
“I can’t believe that our world has come to a place where protection of design and copyrights apparently is more important than protection of human rights,” she adds.
After asking for help (legal representation and money for it) on the same website, Plesner has filed a lawsuit against LV as well – the first hearing is set for March 30.
She believes she will see justice being served in the court of law. Anonymous has also joined the fight on her side, pledging to take down Louis Vuitton by crimpling the house’s profits, as this declaration here will confirm.
It’s called “Operation Skankbag” and has objective the “financial damage to Louis Vuitton. The more, the better.”
“We will use any non-physically violent method available to us to cause financial damage to Louis Vuitton,” the group claims.
As of now, Anonymous has outlined two plans of action: buying and giving away cheap replicas of LV bags to homeless people to decrease the value of the originals, and “spreading negative messages about Louis Vuitton” as punishment for “infringing on our freedom of artistic expression.”
Louis Vuitton has not yet responded to any of this.