Online t-shirt companies SunFrog and GearLaunch are being sued by the producers of Hamilton over copyright infringement. The show’s producers state that the companies have been selling bootleg t-shirts that utilize the show’s logo, according to TMZ.com.
GearLaunch countered that they assumed their freelance artists had obtained all copyright permissions, and were therefore not responsible for any infringement.
“At GearLaunch, our priority is providing services that best support sellers in building successful e-commerce businesses, and as part of that we work hard to ensure our sellers understand that they must respect the intellectual property rights of others,” a spokesperson for the company said in a statement provided to Playbill.com. “We have robust policies in place to prevent sellers using our platform from violating intellectual property laws. What’s more, we take seriously any violations that do occur by working with sellers to correct issues… It is our policy not to comment on pending litigation.”
SunFrog told TMZ, “As an online platform and service provider, there may be instances where user-generated content on our platform doesn't fully comply with either our terms and conditions or intellectual property law in general.”