Unicolors v. H&M Hennes & Mauritz, L.P.

Unicolors, Inc., a company that creates art designs for use on fabrics, created and copyrighted as part of a collection of designs a two-dimensional artwork called EH101 in 2011. In 2015, retail clothing store H&M began selling a jacket and skirt with an art design called “Xue Xu.” Unicolors sued H&M for copyright infringement, alleging that the Xue Xu design is identical to its EH101 design. The district court rejected H&M’s argument that Unicolors’ copyright was invalid because it had improperly used a single copyright registration to register 31 separate works. The court noted that invalidation of a copyright requires an intent to defraud, and no such evidence was presented in this case. Further, it concluded that the application contained no inaccuracies because the separate designs in the single registration were published on the same day. A jury returned a verdict for Unicolors, finding that it owned a valid copyright in EH101, that H&M had infringed on that copyright, and that the infringement was willful. On appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed, finding that there is no intent-to-defraud requirement for registration invalidation, and the district court failed to refer the matter to the Copyright Office, as required under 17 U.S.C. § 411(b)(2), when it was informed of inaccuracies in the copyright registration.