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Articore (ASX:ATG), formerly Redbubble, has received relief from the Australian Federal Court on total compensation owing to the Hells Angels Motorcycle Corporation.
Yes, a legal entity tied to the love-them-or-hate-them bikie gang.
Here’s how we got here. Redbubble, now Articore, provides an online marketplace similar to Etsy where artists can sell their wares. “Artist-made, for you to love,” the company writes of its own products.
Users can flock to the website to upload their own wares in hopes of making it big, or at least, in hopes of making some money.
Most of the products advertised are colourful and vibrant and largely directed at a 20s-to-early-30s audience.
The problem is, at some point, Redbubble failed to keep close enough eye on what was being uploaded with a view towards copyright infringements.
And so when somebody started uploading products using Hells Angels’ iconography, and the club themselves saw that, well. Cue the lawyers.
(It goes without saying the Hells Angels are knowing for taking themselves pretty seriously, if not a little too much.)
At any rate, after a long civil legal battle, today, Articore has won some relief from the Federal Court.
The court is going to reduce the damages for trade mark infringement against Articore from $78,000 to nominal damages of $100, “setting aside the trial court’s award of additional damages.”
“The Full Court has also said that there should be no declarations of infringement, and that it will also narrow the scope of the injunction to a form substantially similar to that proposed by Redbubble during the appeal hearing,” the company wrote on Monday.
A talking head for the respondents called the decision a win for “all online companies in Australia.”
“We are pleased with the judgment of the Full Federal Court. This is a win — not only for Redbubble — but for all online companies in Australia that implement reasonable preventative measures to deal with situations where users might upload potentially infringing content without the platform’s specific knowledge,” the spokesperson said.”
Articore (ATG) shares were still down -4.72%, however, at 11.30am AEDT.
