James Jebbia breaks silence on Supreme Italia

About two years after the explosion of the Supreme Italia phenomenon - known by many as the the legal fake or legit fake saga - Supreme NY is finally going after them with all of its resources.

The New York brand has shifted from a deafening silence to directly attacking IBF - the company that owns Supreme Italia and Supreme Spain - with public and press statements.
The escalation took place from December 2018, when the Samsung case in China and the following Supreme Italia Shanghai store opening, gained the global press' attention - from Highsnobiety to CNN - on the legit fake phenomenon. Supreme NY, therefore, decided to address the issue - in addition to the courtrooms - through public statements and direct attacks towards IBF. The first move was the IG video FUCK THE FAKES, the second a statement released to Hypebeast, and the third (and most important) are the words of James Jebbia released this morning in an interview with The Business of Fashion.

I don’t think another company has really had to deal with this like we have. This is a whole new level of criminal enterprise — these complete imposters and impersonators. This is a company that was able to convince one of the biggest companies in the world [Samsung] that they are the real thing.

- A brief guide to Supreme Italia and Supreme Spain -

Jebbia participates in very few interviews and his direct involvement underlines the importance that Chapter4 (the company that controls Supreme) is dedicating to the issue.
The change in Supreme NY's communication strategy was probably also driven by the Carlyle Group - the international group that in 2017 took over 50% of the brand for 500 million dollars - in order to preserve the value of the brand whilst protecting the key elements of their business: the artificial scarcity of the product and the extreme customer loyalty.
The presence of IBF with physical stores in countries such as Spain and China, prevents the expansion of Supreme NY in these markets and in fact undermines its global position. Again James Jebbia from the interview with BoF states:

People should know that the idea of legal fakes is a complete farce. It would be sad if a new generation thinks that’s actually legit. We don’t do a ton of press and we are quite quiet. These guys are taking full advantage of that… We haven’t had the time to basically go on this massive disinformation tirade or press thing that most people would.

On the pending legal situations regarding the registration of the Supreme logo, James Jebbia said that "We are doing every single thing that we can do to stop [IBF] and I think we are going to prevail".
The trademark registration of the logo is the key point of the whole legit fake saga: Supreme NY has not registered its logo in many countries of the world and IBF has started to do so challenging the American brand.

- Why Supreme NY is struggling with trademarking the Boxlogo? -

At the moment the legal battle between IBF and Chapter4 is taking place in Spain, Italy, China and on European soil, where EUIPO has twice rejected Supreme's attempt to register the boxlogo, but Supreme claims that the request is still in a state of analysis.
Darci J. Bailey - Supreme general counsel who is overseeing the company’s pronged trademark registration and anti-counterfeiting strategy - expands on the legal issue, interviewed by the Business of Fashion:

There is not a jurisdiction in the world that’s said what [IBF is] doing is lawful. Opening stores is only going to yield a bigger victory once we are able to shut those down. They are really after our DNA.

IBF commented the interview with a dry statement:

We comment on the statements of Jebbia limiting ourselves to saying that the use of terms and adjectives released in a gratuitous and disenchanted manner on our society will be brought to the attention of the competent criminal organs and we will not further defer to this international libel and slander.