Wipro roars over Lee design copy row, to take action soon

Bangalore, July 4: Reacting strongly against the ongoing controversy over a copy of Lee design, Wipro officials on Thursday, July 4 claimed that the company would take action.

An official statement on the issue says, "Wipro is aware of news reports alleging copyright infringement in branded collateral that was distributed at a company event."

"Wipro takes pride in its high standards of integrity and corporate governance, and treats these allegations with utmost seriousness. We have initiated an enquiry into the matter and will take appropriate action," added the statement.

Earlier it was reported that the IT giant has done a complete copy of a design made for Lee Jeans. Happy Creative Services, a Bangalore-based company, had won awards at different design and advertising awards shows in 2011.

Two years later, Wipro came up with a carry bag design which reminds everyone of the Lee bag which had attracted attentions with its unique concept.

The concept of the carry bag is -- it can be cut up into different elements such as -- ruler, snake and ladder game and many others. The different parts of the bag is ‘never wasted'.

Surprisingly, Wipro ripped off the concept and executed it without any acknowledgement and permission from Happy.

Firstpost quoted Kartik Iyer, the co-founder of Happy, as saying, "Am honestly pretty disgusted by the open plagiarism of the design. They didn't even bother to change the colours or even the name. ‘Never Wasted' - Seriously?? The design was originally created by Happy for Lee. It even won multiple awards across the world and the design was also lauded by most design sites online."

"Wipro is such a large company. I am sure the stakeholders have no idea this has happened. Such large companies have many groups working on multiple things. I understand that it's important for such large companies to work as little independent units to get things done but its really sad that they cant work together on at least one thing - not copying someone else's work. Sadly, pathetic," added Iyer.

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