A Baltimore punk band and its local label sued the clothing chain Old Navy on Wednesday in Manhattan federal court, charging the retail outlet with lifting the band?s name off a concert flier without permission, and then marketing it on T-shirts sold in their stores.
The OXES and Monitor Records filed a trademark infringement action Aug. 9 in the U.S. District Court of New York, home of Old Navy?s product design team, seeking a permanent injunction against the company and monetary damages. Old Navy is owned by Gap Inc.
“This is intellectual property theft plain and simple,” said plaintiff attorney Carmen Giordano. “Somebody at Old Navy, or working with Old Navy, saw this in a concert flier or Web site, took it without their permission, and has been using it to sell T-shirts across North America. And ? until recently ? it was sold on their Web site.”
?OXES? and ?Live at the Social Club?, an Orlando, Fla., venue the band has played, are splashed across the shirts below the words ?Rock Action presents?. Rock Action is a Glasgow record company, and Giordano said, has worked with Monitor Records.
“We were stunned and surprised when we saw it, and the band was angry,” said Monitor Records owner Jason Foster. “Old Navy has taken the OXES name and have been capitalizing on the independent spirit of the band by linking it to their corporation. That, in turn, confuses our loyal fans and attacks our business ideology.”
The band learned of the Old Navy T-shirts in mid-April, Foster said, from a Texas fan, who e-mailed a link to the store?s online retail site.
The trio, founded in 1998 by Christopher Freeland, Marc Miller and Nathaniel Fowler, is a critically acclaimed band from the Baltimore punk scene.
Gap Inc. has not yet been served the court documents, said spokesperson Melissa Swanson, and did not comment on the litigation.
