Star-lost stripes!

The two parties belong to the cheerleading apparel industry and are rivals to one another. In the industry, Varsity is the older company and is one of the giants. Mostly all the cheerleading uniforms and the dance attire is manufactured by this company. Star Athletica is relatively new in the market. Star Athletica had published their first cheerleading uniform catalogue which was two dimensional hand drawn sketches of the designs. Shortly after that Varsity Brands sued them on the basis of copyright infringement with regard to the drawings. The United States District Court for the Western District of Tennessee told Varsity that there was no copyright infringement as the cheerleading uniform would not be so without the basic design it entails, mostly being stripes, and blocks etc.

Varsity Brands appealed and the United States court of Appeal did uphold that Varsity’s sketches were copyrightable and therefore, it should be protected. Following this Star filed a petition. The arguments put by Star was that  Varsity did not have valid copyrights because the designs were for “useful articles,” which cannot be copyrighted, and the designs cannot be separated from the uniforms themselves, which also makes the designs impossible for copyrighting. Varsity argued that the designs were separable and non-functional, and therefore that the copyrights were valid and had been infringed. The district court granted summary judgment for Star and held that the designs were important to the functionality of the uniform. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reversed and held that the Copyright Act allows graphic features of a design to be copyrighted even when those designs are not separable from a “useful article.”