“Amazon has ceded control of its site,” the Wall Street Journal declared on Friday. In a lengthy investigative report, the publication asserts that “just like tech companies that have struggled to tackle misinformation on their platforms, Amazon has proven unable or unwilling to effectively police third-party sellers on its site.” The result? In addition to a platform saturated with counterfeits, there are “thousands of banned, unsafe or mislabeled products” – ranging from nearly 100 different eyelash-growth products that were falsely listed as “FDA-approved” to sleeping mats the Food and Drug Administration warns can suffocate infants – in the mix, as well.

Towards the end of 2016, Christie’s “sent an email to its customers inviting them to subscribe to an innovative and easy-to-use database with more than 10 million auction results.” Thanks to the highly secure database service, called “Collectrium Market Data Beta,” Christie’s clients could search, track, and manage auction items – from an electric yellow guitar owned by Prince and record-breaking exotic croc-skinned Hermès Birkin bags to Old Masters paintings and buzzy modern works of art. The problem with the exciting new initiative, one aimed at modernizing the age-old art of auctions, according to Christie’s rival Heritage Auctions? Nearly 3 million of its listings had been stolen.  

Adidas, Burberry, Capri Holdings Limited, Chanel,  Galeries Lafayette, Gap Inc., Giorgio Armani, H&M Group, Hermès, Inditex, Karl Lagerfeld, Kering, Matchesfashion.com, Moncler, Nike, Nordstrom, Prada Group, Puma, Ralph Lauren, Salvatore Ferragamo, and Stella McCartney – these are some of the 32 brands and fashion groups that have agreed to sign on to a pact headed up by Kering chairman and CEO François-Henri Pinault in an effort to “reduce the environmental impact of their industry.” 

The fast fashion concept is backed by two such fundamentally attractive ideas – frequent novelty and sheer affordability – that it has enabled the brands that abide by the model to wreak havoc upon the traditional retail model. It has helped stalwart fast fashion companies like Zara and H&M to build big businesses; Spanish giant Zara brought in more than $18 billion in revenue last year, while its Swedish rival welcomed $21 billion in sales. All the while, newer names, such as Fashion Nova, have been garnering eye-popping digital impressions – the California-based brand was the most Googled brand on 2018 – and revenue figures to go with it. 

“The True Story of When Louis Vuitton Sued Supreme,” reads a headline from a major menswear site, timed perfectly to run when the 185-year old luxury brand debuted a collaboration with Supreme last year. “Gucci Sued Dapper Dan Out of Business” is the original title of a recently-published (and since corrected) article from another mainstream media outlet. These are two of the “lawsuits” that fashion has had a field day referencing in connection with the ever-mounting rise of New York-based Supreme, and Gucci's highly-anticipated partnership with Harlem fashion legend, Dapper Dan. In reality, however, neither of those lawsuits ever actually happened.

Images of Emily Ratajkowski and Annabelle Wallis are at the center of two new paparazzi lawsuits, the latest in a string of similar cases initiated over the past few years. Photographer Edward Opinaldo has filed copyright infringement suits in a New York federal court in Monday, asserting that womenswear brand Adeam and creative management powerhouse The Wall Group posted images that he took of the buzzy model and English actress on their respective Instagram accounts without licensing the images or receiving his permission to do so. 

On the heels of a string of recent busts that saw U.S. Customs agents commandeer $3.4 million worth of counterfeits at Los Angeles International Airport – from Hermes and Louis Vuitton bags to Gucci and Nike wares – all coming from Hong Kong, the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center has revealed that the total value of counterfeit goods seized by law enforcement in all of 2018 rose to more than $1 billion.  

Thanks to its multi-Emmy Award-nominated Fyre Festival documentary, Netflix and its production partner Jerry Media – the latter of which was also responsible for all of the (undisclosed) social media marketing for the widely-covered 2017 event – are on the receiving end of a copyright infringement suit for allegedly stealing videos from an unaffiliated filmmaker and using them in their highly-watched and wildly-controversial Fyre documentary. 

Kim Kardashian has not entirely dodged claims that she stole her wildly-popular Kimoji app from another company, but the mega-star has managed to get the $300 million fight out of court and into private arbitration. In a filing late last week, David Liebensohn – the app developer who filed suit against Kardashian in an Oklahoma federal court in February – filed to voluntarily dismiss his fraud and breach of contract action on the condition that the parties take up the matter in arbitration.  

A 2-year long legal battle between haircare startup Olaplex and cosmetics titan L’Oreal is heating up again. Following a week-long jury trial and a favorable verdict for Olaplex, which included a nearly $100 million damages award in connection with the jury’s finding that L’Oreal did, in fact, engage in willful patent infringement and trade secret misappropriation, and breached a confidentiality agreement it entered into with Olaplex, U.S. District Judge Joseph Bataillon ordered that L’Oreal must also pull nine of its products from shelves in the U.S. … for good, a decision that L’Oreal is prepared to fight.