In August 2016, more than 100 designers rallied together to sign on to a court brief in a multi-hundred million dollar legal battle over design patents. The case centered on Samsung’s alleged infringement Apple’s of design patent-protected iPhone, and the designers at play – Nicolas Ghesquière, Alexander Wang, Calvin Klein, Dries Van Noten, Paul Smith, Alber Elbaz and Sacai’s Chitose Abe, among others – threw their support behind Apple.

“In Saudi Arabia, a kingdom where postal codes are rarely used, most people pay in cash, and shopping is done in giant air-conditioned malls, building an online retail business is no easy task,” per Reuters. And yet, the e-commerce sector in the United Arab Emirates has been rapidly growing thanks to an array of mergers and acquisitions over the past couple of years, with investors looking to tap into the region’s huge population of affluent and digitally savvy individuals.

Those barely worn Zara dresses that have been sitting in your closet, the cheap H&M sweaters you bought on a whim at the first hint of winter two years ago, the trend-specific shoes you had to have last May but have since sworn off for a trendier style, these are the things that tend to find their way to Goodwill or the Salvation army donation centers, or discarded in large donation containers strewn across cities in the U.S.

In late 2016, Bloomberg highlighted “one huge American retailer that ignored the internet and won.” That retailer – or better yet, retailers – were T.J. Maxx and Marshalls, Framingham, MA-based TJX Companies’ marquee stores. Fast forward to today and the group’s analyst expectation-beating first quarter revenue report solidifies its continued reign, which has seen the group “focus on keeping prices low and making shopping more engaging,” which, per Reuters, “has helped it draw more people to its stores, a stark contrast to [the reality of] many U.S. retailers that have been hit hard by consumers shopping online.”

Carven is in financial trouble. The Paris-based brand and its parent company, Société Béranger, have filed a voluntary petition with the Commercial Court in Paris in a preceding that mirrors Chapter 11 bankruptcy, in order to remain in business, while it reorganizes and establishes a plan to pay off its creditors. According to spokesman for Carven, the 74-year old house, which was “already [in a financially] fragile [position],” suffered a several million dollar setback thanks to an unexpected delay in production for its Spring/Summer 2018 collection.

Men and millennials are driving significant growth for Balenciaga, according to the brand’s CEO, with the 100-year old couture house posting the fastest growth rates of all the fashion brands under the Kering umbrella, outpacing Gucci, Saint Laurent, Alexander McQueen, and co. “Millennials represent 60 percent of what we sell. Together with men, these are growing faster than any other category,” Balenciaga CEO Cedric Charbit said during the Financial Times’ luxury goods conference in Venice, Italy on Tuesday.

Trouble has finally come to a head at Interview Magazine. The fashion glossy – which was long-known for publishing intimate conversations between some of the world's biggest celebrities, artists, musicians, and other creatives – has announced that it will shutter ... effectively immediately. Behind the scenes, the magazine that pop artist Andy Warhol launched in 1969 is facing at least four ugly lawsuits, all centering on its alleged failure to pay high-level employees, and rumors of trouble gained significant steam last month when the magazine removed two big names from its masthead.

The Supreme Court "dealt a potential blow" to the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment on Monday. In its ruling in three separate wage and hour dispute cases, the court held that employers can legally require – as a condition of employment – that potential employees waive their rights to participate in class action lawsuits. This means that employers may keep employees from joining together in wage and hour disputes, and instead, force them to deal with such matters via arbitration (an alternative dispute resolution) or in court as an individual, not part of a group.

Nestled in between the annual conferences of two of the most esteemed intellectual property organizations in the world, the International Trademark Association and the International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition (“IACC”), was an interesting event. Alibaba – which has been working overtime to address the influx of counterfeit goods that tend to find homes on the market’s largest e-commerce marketplaces – staged an Intellectual Property Rights Protection Summit in Seattle.

Amid the roll-out of hundreds of new generic Top-Level Domains ("gTLDs"), such as .ceo, .cloud and .law, trademark owners have increasingly looked to clamp down on the ownership of infringing domains by third parties. As of last week, Nike gained possession of 20 new domains, including nikeairmax97.com, shopsnikeukoutlet.com and nike-trademark.com, thanks to a World Intellectual Property Organization ("WIPO") Arbitration and Mediation Centre proceeding. The Portland-based sportswear giant claimed that the domains contain its federally registered trademarks and as a result, run afoul of the law.