LEGO in trouble? Artist James Concannon sues over ‘Queer Eye’ jacket

The toy tycoon, LEGO started releasing branded sets decades ago and have secured their position around the globe towards success with their Star Wars series. In recent years. they have started branching out into branded sets that are explicitly aimed at adult collectors— products relating to Sienfeld, Harry Potter, Queer Eye, and Friends.

But the toy brand has waltzed into a major mess with their recent Queer Eye set.

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LEGO's Mistake that led to the lawsuit

Contrary to expectations, creating sets for adults presumably requires a more complex licensing deal than Disney/Lucasfilm asking for another plastic X-Wing. Due to this, the toy tycoon is now being sued over the loft from Netflix’s Queer Eye reboot.

As reported by The Fashion Law, an artist named James Concannon has filed a lawsuit against the toy brand over its plastic recreation of a custom leather jacket that he made for Queer Eye’s Antoni Porowski, accusing the toy company of ripping off his design without permission.

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What happened next?

In the complaint that he filed in a federal court in Connecticut in December, artist James Concannon asserts that in 2018, he created a custom leather jacket for Antoni Porowski, one of the stars of Netflix’s Queer Eye series, which the toy tycoon “intentionally” replicated for its Queer Eye-themed set without seeking Concannon’s authorization and compensation.

The artist, in an interview to the New York Post, claimed that:

“They offered a free Fab 5 Loft set – which retails for $99.99 – for [his] six-year-old son to play with, only to later revoke that offer, telling [him] that they do not give away products for free.”

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Is Netflix to be blamed here?

According to Concannon’s copyright infringement complaint, Porowski wore a number of garments bearing his artwork on the Netflix show, and in all but one instance (when Porowski wore the leather jacket), Concannon says that he received an email from a clearance coordinator for the show to approve such uses.

The real jacket v/s The LEGO copy (Image via TheFashionLaw)

He also stated that Netflix as well as the cast always kept him in the loop when it came to his art, which makes this infringement by LEGO all the more essential to review.

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The case now hinges on whether or not the court finds that the unique placement, coordination, and arrangement of the elements that appear on the jacket are, in fact, protectable and infringed.