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Brian Donnelly, higher generally known as KAWS, was awarded $900,000 in damages this week by a court docket in New York after the artist filed a lawsuit in 2021 accusing a person in Singapore of reproducing KAWS works on lots of of products with a collective retail worth of greater than $63m.
The US Southern District Courtroom of New York ordered Dylan Pleasure An Leong Yi Zhi and two Singaporean corporations related to him to cease producing the counterfeit items that includes KAWS’s well-known Companion character, which is depicted in a lot of his work. The $900,000 awarded to KAWS is supposed to offset “the impact that [Leong’s] counterfeiting has upon the marketplace for plaintiffs’ items, together with the dilution of the merchandise’ distinctiveness and disruption available in the market for KAWS items”, in keeping with the ruling.
David Arkin, KAWS’s undertaking assistant, mentioned in court docket paperwork that Leong’s items had been priced at between $59 and $3,299, and that the full retail value of all 154 pretend KAWS objects reached greater than $63m. Leong was promoting plush dolls, vinyl collectible figurines, ashtrays, skateboards, canvases, posters, sculptures, rugs and neon lights, in keeping with the ruling. Genuine work by KAWS can promote for tens of millions —- his public sale file was set in 2019 when Sotheby’s Hong Kong offered The KAWS Album (2005) for $14.8 million (together with charges).
In keeping with court docket paperwork, one of many corporations’ web sites acknowledged the products on the market had been ”customized hand-reworked reproductions as a result of low costs we’re capable of present”. In keeping with the ruling, that was sufficient proof to display Leong “knowingly meant to promote counterfeit KAWS items”.
KAWS’s workforce submitted proof of 154 merchandise created by Leong they claimed infringed on the artist’s copyright, in keeping with the ruling. KAWS mentioned the sale of knockoffs of his work “damages his fame among the many shopping for public and artwork aficionados,” and might even “chill the marketplace for his authentic work as a result of purchasers worry inadvertently buying a counterfeit”, in keeping with the ruling. KAWS spends greater than $40,000 yearly figuring out counterfeits and issuing takedown notices, he mentioned.
KAWS filed the lawsuit towards Leong in 2021, however famous in court docket paperwork that his workforce first despatched over cease-and-desist letters and takedown notices the earlier yr. Aaron Richard Golub, a lawyer for KAWS, informed Artnet Information the artist will subsequent search a judgement towards Jonathan Anand, one other defendant within the case. Representatives for KAWS declined to remark, and Leong’s lawyer didn’t instantly reply to The Artwork Newspaper’s requests for remark.
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