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Pop star Katy Perry has lost her years-long lawsuit against an Australian fashion brand called Katie Perry for the second time.
In a decision handed down by the High Court on Wednesday, judges ruled that designer Katie Taylor had not damaged the reputation of the American singer or created confusion with her clothing brand, created in 2007.
Taylor, who changed her last name in 2015, successfully sued Perry two years ago for selling merchandise on a 2014 Australian tour, but the ruling was overturned in 2024 and the designer’s trademark was canceled.
The new ruling revealed that Perry’s reputation was so well established in Australia that anyone seeing the Taylor clothing brand would not confuse the two names.
“This has been an incredibly long and difficult journey,” Taylor said in a statement shortly after the ruling.
“But today it confirms what I’ve always believed: that brands should protect businesses of all sizes.”
The case revolves around the sale of clothing under the Katie Perry brand in Australia and the sale of Katy Perry brand products during the singer’s tour.
In 2007, Taylor – then going by her maiden name – registered her business name, Katie Perry, and applied for a trademark.
As of 2008, she sold clothing at local markets, had a website and several social media accounts with the Katie Perry brand.
But in 2009, the Roar singer’s lawyers asked Taylor to stop using her trademark and signaled their intention to oppose a trademark application, but later dropped the lawsuit.
“I had never heard of the singer when I started my label,” Taylor said, with court documents detailing how she first heard of Katy Perry in mid-2008, when the song I Kissed A Girl came on the radio.
“I was just building a fashion business under the name I was born with.”
But in 2024, it was overturned on appealwith the judges saying Perry was using his name as a trademark five years before Taylor started his business.
At the time, Taylor described the case as a battle of “David versus Goliath,” saying she was devastated by the decision.
On Wednesday, the High Court – in a majority decision – found that given the “increased strength of Katy Perry’s reputation”, “no ordinary person in Australia… upon a moment’s reflection” would think that Katie Perry’s products were linked to the American singer.
“This case was never just about a name,” Taylor said.
“It’s about protecting small businesses in Australia, standing up for what’s right and showing we all matter.”
In recent years, Katy Perry has made headlines for a variety of reasons, ever since she was mocked for kiss the earth after disembarking from a Blue Origin space flight, she high-profile divorce of the actor Orlando Bloom and her new relationship with former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
