The blogger behind the satirical site WTForever21, whose particular brand of sass we have known and appreciated for some time, has been hit with a cease-and-desist from the California-based clothier. If Rachel Kane doesn’t delete her site — Forever 21’s latest deadline is June 10 — the company says it will file a lawsuit against her.
Forever 21’s threatening letter, a copy of which I obtained from Kane, accuses WTForever21 of “trademark infringement, copyright infringement, unfair competition and dilution” of the Forever 21 brand. Forever 21’s in-house counsel, Jerry Noh, wrote that while Forever 21 appreciates Kane’s “indicated patronage” of the store, her “website’s name refers to an abbreviation for colloquial expression that the general public may find offensive, and such colloquial expression is being used in conjunction with our Company’s name, registered trademark, and domain name.” The idea that a reader might mistake WTForever21.com for Forever 21’s own homepage is ludicrous, but clearly this isn’t a fair legal fight. Forever 21 has the resources to make any court case unpleasant and protracted. Forever 21 has spread around the world (and made its owners, Do Won Chang and Jin Sook, extroardinarily wealthy) amid concerns over labor violations and many instances of Forever 21’s theft of other designers’ intellectual property. (The company has settled numerous lawsuits stemming from its copyright violations; a documentary, Made in L.A., covers one of the company’s legal tussles with its workers, to whom it paid illegally low wages. In January, a reporter for Bloomberg Businessweek visited a Los Angeles area sweat shop and found garment workers sewing Forever 21 vests for twelve cents apiece. If a worker finished 66 vests in an hour, she would make minimum wage.) You can read Forever 21’s very sternly worded cease and desist letter to Kane in full; click to enlarge.