A few weeks ago, Kendall and Kylie Jenner stepped into another controversy. This time, it involved their clothing line, Kendall + Kylie, and their line of vintage-style concert t-shirts. The problem was that instead of actually designing some interesting t-shirts, Kendall and Kylie grabbed some licensed images, overlaid their own photos and sold those t-shirts as new (see the image above). The other problem was that many of the images were of African-American artists like Biggie and Tupac. Of course, they also did the exact same thing to an iconic image of Jim Morrison. The families of Biggie and Tupac and the surviving members of The Doors made a lot of noise about suing Kendall and Kylie, and one photographer has actually filed a lawsuit against them. Kendall and Kylie’s lawyers responded, and this response is… amazing. Like, the justifications from Team Jenner are almost Trump-esque in their logic.

Kendall and Kylie Jenner have responded to a photographer’s lawsuit that the sisters used his Tupac Shakur images without permission for their controversial, now-canceled T-shirt line.

“The allegations made are completely false and the lawsuit is baseless,” the Jenners’ clothing company said in a statement. On Friday, photographer Michael Miller, who took the photographs of the rap legend that the Jenners then overlayed their own images on top of, said the sisters “misappropriated and wrongfully exploited” his work. Miller’s suit added the Jenners “intended to exploit his photography, let alone obtain his authorization.”

However, the sisters’ company argued that “no infringement or violation of anyone’s rights” had occurred regarding the Shakur photographs since they purchased the images from a company that had been authorized to license them, Sky News reports.

“Canada Inc, the licensee manufacturer of the K + K brand, purchased a very small quantity of vintage T-shirts with performer images already on them. Only two Tupac T-shirts were sold before being pulled from distribution,” the Jenners said in a statement. “Canada Inc did not copy anyone’s image, remove any copyright notice from any image or attempt to exploit Mr. Miller’s claimed right of publicity.”

As Miller lawyer’s Scott Alan Burroughs previously noted, the photographer registered his Tupac images at the U.S. Office of Copyright and could receive statutory damages of $150,000 per photo. In a separate statement Friday, the Jenners’ representative Todd Wilson said that Kendall and Kylie had no role in the actual creation of the clothes. “It’s like suing an actor for being in a movie,” Wilson said of Miller’s lawsuit.

While the Jenners have faced the specter of legal action from artists like the Doors and the Notorious B.I.G. – the estates of both filed cease-and-desist orders and left the door open for possible lawsuits – Miller is the first to actually sue the sisters over their ill-advised shirts.

[From Rolling Stone]

While I’m not a lawyer, I dabble in legal analysis on the internet, so it seems to me like Kylie and Kendall do not have a legal leg to stand on. Their defense is basically “we bought the t-shirts as they had already been licensed and then we crapped them up with our own images and sold them for a huge mark-up and that’s totally fine.” That is not fine. It is in violation of the photographer’s copyright to change, alter or overlay your own tacky image onto his work FOR PROFIT. And it doesn’t matter if the Jenners sold two t-shirts (heh) or two thousand – there was still a copyright infringement. As for the argument of “Kendall and Kylie don’t actually have anything to do with their own clothing company” – while I believe that, that’s a really horrible argument too. The clothing line is called Kendall + Kylie. They are literally the faces of the company. They put their own faces on top of copyrighted images.

Photos courtesy of WENN, Kendall + Kylie’s clothing line.