IT BS Watch

I was a bit surprised to see the announcement from the Consumer Electronics Show that fashion designer Ed Hardy was going to begin offering mobile phone accessories. The rather garish-looking booth with scantily clad ladies adorned with Blackberries wasn’t the source of shock; rather the fact that I had assumed Ed Hardy had long been offering phone accessories already. Over the past year during my trips to China I would frequently see Ed Hardy phone accessories, generally replaceable covers for all manner of phones, and I assumed these were copies of a legitimate product already offered by the company.

I can only wonder if Ed Hardy got the idea from the pirates, or how a lawsuit in this case would look… Could pirates sue Ed Hardy for use of their proprietary cover design with “borrowed” artwork, or would Ed Hardy have to explain in court that it was suing for copying products that had copied their artwork? I guess life really is stranger than fiction!