A federal appellate court has reversed a copyright infringement trial loss for clothing retailer H&M Hennes & Mauritz LP, finding that the district judge below erred in evaluating the company’s defense that textile designer Unicolors Inc. had included known inaccuracies in its application to register a copyright for the pattern at the center of the dispute. 

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Friday held that U.S. District Judge Andre Birotte Jr. of the Central District of California should have requested that the Register of Copyrights advise him as to whether Unicolor’s inclusion of inaccurate information would have caused the agency to refuse registration rather than making the determination himself in the first instance. The panel also found the Birotte erred in imposing an intent-to-defraud requirement for H&M to invalidate Unicolor’s registration.