ACID member Lola Design is well known as an innovative company designing and creating original premium art and greetings cards. All of their artwork is created in house by Amanda Mountain, a Director of Lola Design, and is then applied to their products including greetings cards and wall art.
One card range designed by Amanda is called the ‘Wildlife Botanical’ collection. What is unusual is the juxtaposition of animals and flowers and is immediately recognisable as Amanda’s work. As part of this collection Amanda designed three cards. One of these featured a pheasant (created in December 2015), one featured an owl (created in March 2016) and one featured a hedgehog (created in September 2016). Lola Design owns the copyright in all the original artwork for these designs (which were sent to the ACID Copyright & Design Databank).
In February 2016 Lola Design was approached by Evans Lichfield at the International Spring Fair in Birmingham to enquire about the possibility of licensing the ‘Wildlife Botanical’ collection. Subsequently, Evans Lichfield released their own remarkably similar range of artwork featuring a pheasant, an owl and a hedgehog which seemed surprising. Evans Lichfield maintain that any similarities between their works and the ‘Wildlife Botanical’ collection are conceptual only and that their works do not reproduce a substantial part of Lola Designs’ collection. Isn’t it odd that Evans Lichfield should choose exactly the same game, bird and mammal combination and represent them in a pheasant, owl and hedgehog?