Kendall and Kylie Jenner have settled the Tupac lawsuit, but the two have a history of plagiarism accusations against their names
Kylie and Kendall Jenner can breathe a sigh of relief as photographer Michael Miller who sued them for using his pictures of deceased rapper Tupac Shakur in their new line of tees dropped his lawsuit against them, with both sides agreeing to pay for their own legal fees, TMZ reported.
The t-shirts had used famous pictures of Tupac without the photographer's permission and had included the Jenners' faces superimposed over the images of the rapper. However, a similar lawsuit over the use of the Notorious B.I.G.'s pictures on t-shirts is still being battled in court.
The Jenners' companies, however, may not have been responsible for printing the controversial t-shirts. A source revealed to TMZ that the reality TV stars and fashion icons had merely licensed their images to a third party company, which had then printed them over the images of the legendary rappers without the permission of the owners of the copyrights for those images.
Despite the matter being settled with Miller, there is a possibility that a settlement was paid to the photographer, as is the style of the younger Jenner, who has been embroiled in accusations of plagiarism multiple times in the past. As soon as objections were raised, the t-shirts were taken off their websites, but there have been many instances in the past where Kylie was accused of copying other designers and artists.
Last June, Kylie announced the release of her camo clothing line that features lighter, 'camokinis,' and dad caps among other offerings. However, there were rumors that she had been heavily influenced by designer Tizita Balemlay's brand, Plugged NYC, which has been worn by the likes of Keke Palmer, Rihanna, and Kylie herself. The uncanny similarity of a number of Kylie's new items to Balemlay was not lost on fans.
In May 2017, the Kendall + Kylie (K + K) clothing collection was accused of 'borrowing' the design for their Shiloh Platform Sandal from Chanel's chain link mules, with an undeniable similarity between the two brands of footwear. The controversy was of particular interest because of the fact that Kendall herself has modeled for the fashion house a number of times in the past.
February 2017 saw the makeup mogul come under fire on two different occasions - once for her flame-printed sweats that were nearly identical to sweatsuits that were being sold by Cake Asia, an indie brand, and once for a white t-shirt with the words 'The American Dream' emblazoned on them that was the carbon copy of a t-shirt by British designer Jasper Cunningham.
Perhaps the most blatant case of imitation occurred in November, 2016, when Kylie's Christmas campaign used a promotional image that appeared to be heavily inspired by a picture posted to Instagram by makeup artist Vlada Haggerty. That wasn't even the worst part - Haggerty had previously accused Kylie of stealing her metallic lip look and the logo that she used on the packaging of all her Lip Kit products.
When she first made the comparisons, Haggerty told Refinery29, "Crediting artists is essential, but this goes beyond that. It’s theft. This is our livelihood. I see these things happen too many times to artists. We are all trying to make it, and this business is extremely competitive. I would ask anyone at this level [to] use the proper channels to obtain images."
We wonder what Kylie and Kendall have to say about these plagiarism accusations...