An Irish fashion designer told the High Court yesterday that a Dunnes Stores top was "a direct copy " of a Karen Millen sweater.
In a landmark case over the protection of design rights, Helen Mc Alinden said she had examined both the Karen Millen "cami vest with a full shrug" and a Savida sweater sold by Dunnes Stores.
"I look at the Dunnes Stores garment as a direct copy. There is a slight difference in the shade of the black. I think any consumer would would see these garments as the same," she said.
Asked by Michael McDowell SC, for Mosaic, the UK retail chain which includes Karen Millen, what she would think if she saw two women wearing the Karen Millen garment and the Dunnes Stores garment, she replied: "I would say they are both wearing very nice tops but they are the same."
Yesterday was the second day of the action in the Commercial Court by Mosaic Fashions, the parent company of Karen Millen Ltd, Coast Ltd and Whistles Ltd, against Dunnes Stores.
The companies claim that Dunnes had produced almost identical women's clothing items to a number of tops produced by them, thus infringing their design rights as protected by a new European regulation of 2001 on Unregistered Community Designs.
Ms McAlinden told Mr McDowell that she has been in the fashion industry for 25 years and has worked as a freelance designer in the UK and Ireland.
She set up her own label in 2001 and her clothes are now sold in House of Fraser in Dundrum, another outlet in Dublin, Belfast and two shops in the UK.
She said the Karen Millen "cami vest with a full shrug" featured a number of distinctive features, making the garment distinctive. She also examined a Karen Millen shirt which had a number of distinctive features and a similar Savida shirt from Dunnes Stores.
"It's almost the same. If two women walked into the room my initial impression would be that they are wearing the same shirt."
Cross-examined by Richard Nesbitt SC, for Dunnes Stores, Ms McAlinden said she knows Ian Galvin, who is chairman of the Irish Mosaic Group.
She said Mr Galvin used to be a shareholder of her company but was no longer. She denied she now has a business relationship with Mr Galvin. The garment business in Ireland is a very small industry, she said.
Opening the case for Dunnes Stores, Mr Nesbitt said there was an issue between the plaintiff and the defendant over the criteria for establishing that any particular item of clothing enjoys the protection of the unregistered design right.
Under the European regulation, "copying per se isn't wrong", counsel said. The regulation was to give protection to something that would have a quality of sufficient importance to protect it and it was not enough that the product was new, he said.
"It has got to have individual character," he said. "We say this is high street fashion. Our witnesses will be saying that what we are dealing with here is not the kind of fashion that you read about in the newspapers. It's not high fashion."
The case continues today.