Interview: The Leta vs. Sunlight Copyright Dispute

How does the brand Leta manage to reinvent amber, create unique jewelry designs, and fight back against violations of its rights?

In an interview with Alexandra Bakhtiozina, Mikhail Tantsura shared his unique experience launching a niche jewelry brand, and talked about the dispute — and upcoming lawsuit — with the company Sunlight.

Tell us how it all started, and why jewelry specifically.

It all began when my friend — and now also my business partner — Katya Alagich visited an amber processing plant. Katya went there at the invitation of the PR team after the plant came under the control of Rostec. When Katya got back, we talked, and we sighed together about how unfortunate the situation was — amber is such a cool stone, yet it's mostly used in jewelry with such outdated designs. That time, nothing came of it; we just sighed about it.

At the time I had a different project going on in parallel — a guide for expats and tourists, and English-language tours. At some point I decided to find something new for myself. About six months after that first conversation with Katya about amber, it came back to me, and I thought that amber's "unfashionable" reputation was a problem that could actually be solved. That idea stuck with me, and I started digging into data on the jewelry market, and on the amber market specifically. I wanted to flip the game and come up with amber jewelry that wasn't outdated, but beautiful and modern.

That was exactly our story hook: we reinvented amber, gave it geometric form, and created modern shapes and motifs.

The brand was originally called Ambery. When did the rebrand happen?

We released our first amber collection and immediately started work on our second collection, Roma — which happens to be the one Sunlight decided to copy. In that collection our stones are smaller. Our production workshop did manage to make amber stones of the right size, but the team really struggled with it and told us that it was too complicated for large-scale production. So we were faced with a choice: either look for a different production team, or use different stones for that collection. We were completely happy with our production team — the stones they made for the first collection were of very high quality. It was clear these were people who approached their work conscientiously, and that mattered a lot to us.

Beyond that, we also decided that working only with amber might eventually get boring for us too. Amber's color palette is fairly limited, after all — it runs from orange to yellow. So we decided to try other stones as well. That's how, with the launch of our second collection, Roma, it became clear that it was time for a rebrand. And we changed "Ambery" to "Leta."

How was the ROMA collection created? What was the source of inspiration?

Architecture, and classical and contemporary art, are the foundation of every one of our collections. The Roma collection became our version of a modern reading of ancient Roman architecture. Its main motifs are narrow window openings and semicircular arches, the strict symmetry of columns, and the oculi in cathedral domes. And the photoshoot for the Roma collection is our reinterpretation of the story of Roman Holiday — the 1953 American film starring Audrey Hepburn.

How did you find out that similar pieces were being sold at Sunlight?

Some friends sent us a photo from the store and asked whether it was our jewelry.

What was your first reaction?

For Katya, of course, as the designer, it was unpleasant and hurtful, but she tries to take it with humor. You can see that in the video where we walked into the store together, smiling, to do a test purchase.

When I found out, I actually found it kind of funny. If you're going to borrow something, you should at least do it smartly — change something, refine it, make it better, do it in a way that keeps you from getting caught. But here everything was done so crudely that there wasn't even room to argue it was "just similar" or that they'd drawn on the same source of inspiration. Six of our pieces were copied one-to-one.

So we're confident we'll win the upcoming lawsuit. It's all so obvious and clear-cut that I have no doubts about it at all.

Are you expecting the defendant to argue "parallel/independent creation" in court?

Yes, that will most likely be their defense strategy. They even have a template with those kinds of arguments that they use to respond to customer questions about copying. If someone calls them out somewhere for copying, they immediately paste in that stock phrase as a reply.

That may well be their core strategy: take what belongs to others, copy it, and hope they don't get caught. Or hope that arguments about parallel creation will work.

Why do you think this happens? The market in Russia isn't that big after all — everyone can see everyone else, and it's obvious this kind of thing gets discovered sooner or later.

I think that when weighing the possible downsides, infringers understand that most small brands don't have their rights protected and lack the resources to make a big fuss. Small brands aren't always ready to defend their rights and go to court. So for the infringer, the potential profit from the infringement often outweighs the potential losses.

Did you prepare in advance to protect your rights in case of infringement?

Before releasing a collection, we always have photos and detailed descriptions notarized, with the date recorded. In the event of a copyright dispute, that kind of evidence can help establish in court that our work came first. It's much cheaper than obtaining a design patent for every individual design.

Did you try to resolve the dispute amicably?

We sent a pre-litigation demand letter proposing to settle the dispute out of court. What's more, in that letter we offered, as an option, not to make the infringement public. But the letter was ignored.

Now you're planning to go to court. What outcome would satisfy you?

A ban on selling the counterfeit goods and their destruction, plus payment of compensation at double the value of the goods sold.

We got very lucky, because Sunlight had the number of units sold posted right on their website for each item. Usually calculating compensation is harder, because you also have to go hunting for that sales data.

Did this whole experience teach you anything? Will you do anything differently now?

There's not much you can really do here — fakes, knockoffs, copies will always exist. It's simply a separate, constant background task for any designer who cares: monitoring for cases like this and defending your rights.

Was this the first time something like this happened to you?

We had suspicions about one other brand, which may have drawn inspiration from our first collection and also released some fairly original amber jewelry. They too leaned into geometric shapes, and in our view their pieces looked a lot like ours. But that was a case where proving infringement would have been difficult, because it was a deeply reworked and reimagined design. It's possible our jewelry simply became a source of inspiration for them. We decided at the time that there was no point starting a dispute. Besides, that brand was even smaller than us. It's one thing when a giant of the industry copies you and can get away with anything; it's a completely different story when someone is simply inspired by you.

We chose amber ourselves because from the start we wanted to create something for export, to show that Russia doesn't just export oil and gas, but design too. That's the purpose behind creating our brand, and I'm genuinely glad that other designers have also discovered this stone, are popularizing it, and are reinterpreting it in a modern way.

There really have been a lot of Russian brands lately making contemporary amber jewelry.

Yes, and that's wonderful!

Does the industry support you?

Yes — after we told our story publicly, several brands that had also run into copying reached out to us. The comments varied: some just wanted to share their own complaint, some asked for advice, some wished us luck in court. So far, though, we've only told our story publicly and haven't tried to rally all designers into a united front against unfair copying. That said, we've now started thinking that maybe it's worth raising this issue on a broader, more global level — not so much from a legal standpoint, but more from a moral and ethical one.

Do you think publicizing this story will help? Does the institution of reputation work in Russia?

Of course! Even if Sunlight itself doesn't care. You can compare it to civil society — if you stay silent and do nothing when your rights are violated, everyone will start to think that's just normal. So, in a broader sense, we see making this story public as also serving a kind of social mission.

What other legal difficulties have you run into as the brand has developed?

Overall, no real difficulties — I'm fairly well-versed in company formation, equity distribution, and trademark protection, since I also work in consulting on the side.

Some question comes up — say, how to sell jewelry abroad. I start searching for answers, which eventually leads to a workable scheme that we start operating by. I just have that kind of mindset — I enjoy figuring things out, even bureaucratic questions. I genuinely like solving problems. I don't even really see it as a hardship, more as a challenge that's satisfying to work through.

You and Katya have formed a really organic creative-business partnership. Who's responsible for what?

Katya is responsible for the design of all the collections: she comes up with the ideas and draws them. The sketches are then handed off to a specialist who handles 3D modeling. Based on the 3D models, wax models are made first, which are then sent into production. We have a PR manager, an employee who handles online orders, and an employee responsible for working with the stores that carry us. And then there's me.

We also have a production team, but production is outsourced — they make jewelry for other brands too. Our core team is made up of 7 people.

What are your future plans?

Releasing new collections, and returning to international markets. Before March 2022, roughly 30% of our sales were abroad. Several foreign stores we used to work with stopped selling us. We have a plan to rebuild that volume of sales, and that's what we're working on going forward.