Three months after sending a cease-and-desist notice to Justin Bieber with allegations that Bieber’s Justice album art infringes on their own trademarked logo, French dance duo Justice are publicly commenting on the situation.
Both Justice the duo’s logo design and Bieber’s Justice art and related merchandise feature the word ‘Justice’ with the letter T styled like a cross.
“Obviously, we don’t own the word ‘Justice’ and we don’t own the cross. But [Bieber’s] management got in touch first to ask where our logo came from, so it’s not some unhappy coincidence. To me, it’s a very conscious rip-off. And that’s where the problem is,” Justice’s Gaspard Augé said in interview with The Guardian published on Saturday (June 26).
“Though Bieber is from Canada, his actions fit this mindset of American hegemony: ‘Oh well, it’s just a small band from France, I’m sure we can take their name, nobody will care,'” said Augé. Billboard reached out to a representative for Bieber for comment on Saturday.
Previously, Rolling Stone reported that, according to Justice’s management, Bieber’s legal team did “reject” the original cease-and-desist letter.
The cease-and-desist letter obtained by Rolling Stone read, “Your use of the Mark is illegal. You have not received permission from Justice to utilize the Mark. Moreover, Bieber’s work is in no way affiliated with, supported by, or sponsored by Justice. Such use of the Mark is not only illegal, but likely to deceive and confuse consumers.”
The report also included an email dated April 29, 2020 in which an individual reportedly from Bieber’s management team contacted Justice’s management requesting to connect with the designer of Justice’s logo to work on a Bieber project. The designer allegedly wrote to Bieber’s management that “I’m available to discuss about logo design sometime next week,” but did not hear back from them at the time.
