It all started with a child’s drawing
My daughter Frida has loved drawing and creating things ever since she was little. When she was around two or three years old, she drew a rather charming elephant which we liked so much that, as part of a small agency side project, we turned it into a T-shirt. At the time, our agency shop at shop.48design.com included a category along the lines of “Agency Kids” or “Creative Kids”, featuring designs created by children from our families and immediate surroundings.
The design was called “Frida Elephant” — not because the elephant was called Frida, but because Frida had drawn it. It had absolutely nothing to do with the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo: no portrait, no quote, none of her artwork, no reference to her artistic style and no deliberate connection to her as a person. It was simply a child’s drawing made by our daughter.
The commercial scale of this truly gigantic merchandising empire was equally impressive: the T-shirt was ordered exactly once — by my wife, as a test order to check the new shop, the print-on-demand service and the ordering process.
At least that part worked.
Then came the cease-and-desist letter
On March 14, 2022, we received a trademark infringement warning. The Frida Kahlo Corporation owns, among other rights, trademarks covering the word “FRIDA”, including for clothing, and the opposing side has maintained ever since that our use of the name “Frida” in our shop constituted use as a trademark.
We still see it differently. Our position is actually quite simple: in our view, “Frida” identified the creator of the drawing — my daughter — not a brand. Our lawyer pointed this out as early as 2022, because the name appeared in the context of a category featuring children’s drawings and, from our perspective, clearly referred to the child who had created the design.
Nevertheless, as a precaution, we submitted a contractual cease-and-desist undertaking, expressly without acknowledging any legal obligation. In other words, this did not mean: “Yes, we infringed a trademark.” It was a pragmatic decision intended to prevent the situation from escalating into an additional and potentially expensive injunction proceeding.
How a single T-shirt suddenly resulted in a matter value of €250,000
One figure has raised eyebrows ever since the dispute began: €250,000. That was the amount set as the “Gegenstandswert” — the value of the matter used for calculating legal fees — in the original warning.
Before anyone assumes that we were being asked to pay a quarter of a million euros: no. In simplified terms, this value is a legal calculation basis used, among other things, to determine statutory lawyers’ fees. Based on that figure, the opposing side initially demanded several thousand euros in warning-related legal costs; today, the dispute still revolves around just under €2,900.
And this is where one of the truly absurd parts of the story begins.
More than €8,000 in legal fees over a dispute worth less than €2,900
Our own legal costs have now exceeded €8,000, while the proceedings are still ongoing. No, this does not threaten the existence of 48DESIGN. We are still developing websites, online shops and software, looking after our clients and, of course, taking on new projects.
Even so, it is economically rather frustrating when a small limited company spends more than €8,000 defending itself in a dispute where the actual payment claim is below €3,000. The truly bizarre part is this: simply paying the original demand would have been cheaper by now.
And that thought bothers me almost more than the original warning itself. Because what does that mean in practice? Should you simply accept a claim you believe to be unjustified as soon as defending yourself becomes more expensive than paying it? At that point, the outcome is no longer determined solely by the law, but also by who can afford to have their position properly examined in the first place.
First lawsuit: withdrawn
In 2024, legal proceedings were brought for the first time to recover the warning-related costs. That first lawsuit did not end with a judgment, however; the claimant withdrew it completely during the oral hearing.
Unfortunately, that did not bring the matter to an end. Shortly afterwards, the same claim was pursued again — first through a formal payment order and then in a new court case. The proceedings are now continuing before the Mannheim Regional Court.
“Quite simply, this case is not about a dress.”
Over the course of the past few years, things have occasionally become so strange that I have had to double-check whether I was actually reading our own case file. Information and documents apparently belonging to other FRIDA proceedings have repeatedly surfaced in our case.
Under our court file number, for example, references appeared that related to proceedings against another clothing retailer. Even in 2026, the opposing side suddenly referred in one of its submissions to a “FRIDA dress”. Our lawyer responded with admirable clarity: “Quite simply, this case is not about a dress.”
Hard to argue with that.
Our case concerns a child’s drawing printed on a T-shirt. It is publicly documented that there are other, similar FRIDA cases; anyone searching for “Frida Kahlo Abmahnung” will find reports from various German law firms going back several years. We do not know how many cases there have been in total, however, which is why I am deliberately not inventing numbers or hastily describing the situation as a “mass warning campaign”.
What is not speculation, however, is that other FRIDA proceedings have repeatedly appeared in our own case file.
And who is actually entitled to claim the €2,900?
By now, the court is dealing with a question that has almost nothing to do with the elephant itself. The current claimant is not the Frida Kahlo Corporation directly, but IHR ANWALT 24 Rechtsanwalt-AG, operating under the name ZIERHUT IP.
It argues that the Frida Kahlo Corporation assigned its claim for reimbursement of the warning-related costs to the law firm. Our side disputes, among other things, whether the mandate terms and conditions relied upon for that assignment were ever effectively incorporated into the original engagement.
A decision should actually have been issued by now. Instead, the oral proceedings were reopened. A witness connected to the claimant is now expected to testify about how that original engagement came about. Our lawyer considers the witness to have been nominated too late and asked the court not to admit the evidence; the court takes a different view.
So the case continues — more than four years later, over a T-shirt that was sold once, to my wife.
I can honestly think of better hobbies.
Should an ordinary first name really be protected this broadly?
Beyond our particular case, there is another, more fundamental question that has increasingly occupied me. Personally, I find it difficult to understand how an ordinary and widely used first name such as Frida can enjoy such extensive trademark protection for clothing.
I can much more readily understand protecting a full name such as Frida Kahlo, a specific logo or something that clearly refers to the artist. The first name on its own is where things become more difficult for me.
Of course, I know that the trademark is registered and that personal names can, in principle, function as trademarks. But even a validly registered trademark does not automatically mean that every use of the same word constitutes trademark infringement. That is precisely why, in our case, the decisive question is how the name was actually used.
And I still believe this: if my daughter Frida creates a drawing and her name appears alongside that drawing, I find it extremely questionable to automatically interpret that as trademark use of the word “FRIDA”.
The small irony surrounding Frida Kahlo
The story gains another layer when you look at what has happened around Frida Kahlo over the years. Her name and image can now be found on countless consumer products — T-shirts, bags, mugs, phone cases, perfume and much more.
This extensive commercialisation has itself been the subject of critical journalism for years. Personally, I find the irony difficult to miss: an artist who today represents individuality, self-determination and challenging social conventions has simultaneously become a globally marketed brand.
And meanwhile, we are standing in a German regional court discussing whether my daughter was allowed to use her own first name in connection with her own childhood drawing.
You really could not make this stuff up.
Why we have never mentioned any of this on 48design.de before
This legal dispute has been with us since 2022, yet we have deliberately never mentioned it on our company website. 48DESIGN is an agency for new media. We design and develop websites, online shops, custom software and digital products. This is not a legal blog, and we certainly do not want a trademark dispute to define our company.
The BNN article published today was simply the point at which I thought: now we can tell the story ourselves as well.
From our perspective, without artificial drama and without pretending the agency is about to close tomorrow — but equally without pretending that a legal dispute lasting more than four years and generating more than €8,000 in our own legal costs is just some insignificant footnote.
BNN reports on our case
On October 30, 2026, the Badische Neueste Nachrichten published a detailed article about the case. I am genuinely pleased that they did — not because appearing in a newspaper alongside a child’s drawing was particularly high on my bucket list, but because I believe our case raises questions that go well beyond this one T-shirt.
How far should trademark protection for a first name extend? When does an ordinary use of a person’s name become trademark use? And above all: how expensive should it be to have a question like this clarified by a court?
Why there is a GoFundMe campaign
Because the costs have now moved a very long way from the amount originally at stake, I started a GoFundMe campaign. Not because 48DESIGN is about to disappear — hey, we survived the pandemic too! — but because I would like to offset part of the legal and court costs that have already arisen and those that may still follow.
Above all, I would like to avoid reaching a point where decisions about possible further legal steps depend solely on how many additional lawyer hours we are willing to finance.
Anyone who would like to support the case can find the campaign here:
gofundme.com/f/ein-kindertshirt-fast-8000-anwaltskosten
And if donating is not your thing, sharing the story helps just as much.
If the donations ultimately exceed the amount needed for the legal dispute, the remaining funds will go to ARTHELPS gGmbH — an initiative run by creatives that gives children in difficult circumstances a voice through art and creative projects.
That feels rather fitting for a story that began with a child’s drawing.
So, what happens now?
For now, we are waiting for the next hearing and to hear what the witness has to say. Perhaps, eventually, there will actually be a judgment addressing the question that started this entire adventure in the first place.
Until then, we will keep doing what we much prefer doing: websites, online shops, software and design.
If you would rather talk to us about a digital project than trademark law, you can find our normal day-to-day agency work right here at 48design.com.
Our agency shop is still around too, at shop.48design.com.
You probably will not find “Frida Elephant” there at the moment, though.
You live and learn. 😉