For the past three years, Nirvana has been battling designer Marc Jacobs , who was sued by the band for the unauthorized use of the "smiley face" characteristic Redux Grunge collection The image is quite similar to the Nirvana logo, featuring an "MJ" instead of the letter X in the eyes.
Now, the band is about to enter another legal battle, but this time as the target. The heiress of a British artist is suing Nirvana for the unauthorized use of an illustration created for Dante Alighieri 's Inferno , the first of three parts of the epic poem Divine Comedy.
Jocelyn Susan Bundy has filed a lawsuit over the unauthorized use of the illustration of the circles of Hell, designed by her grandfather, CW Scott-Giles, and used by Nirvana since 1997 on official band merchandise such as t-shirts, mugs, and vinyl records.
The official complaint further states that some products marked as official Nirvana merchandise have used the illustration since 1989 and that the band and representatives “have repeatedly made false claims of copyright ownership using fake watermarks,” and that Nirvana's defense “implied” that the illustration was created by Kurt Cobain or, alternatively, that it is in the public domain in the United States and that, therefore, the band is free to use it “without authorization or compensation.”
READ ALSO: Led Zeppelin wins plagiarism lawsuit over "Stairway to Heaven" and sets precedent.
