JTV has fired back and denied charges made in a copyright infringement lawsuit filed against it by Sarda jewelry and its designer Janyl Sherman. And in a countersuit, the network claims she created her own competing home shopping channel via social media.
“Sarda, Ms. Sherman, and JTV had a mutually beneficial business relationship which was quite lucrative for Sarda and Ms. Sherman<” JTV said in its 83-page complaint. “But the lucrative relationship they already had was still not enough. So Sarda and Ms. Sherman launched a multi-faceted scheme to take what they had built with JTV all for themselves.”
Those efforts included “underhanded efforts to discover and have access to JTV’s confidential customer information, breaching their contractual obligations concerning sales of Sarda’s products, actions that undercut JTV’s sales and promotional efforts, efforts that conflated Sarda and Ms. Sherman with JTV’s Artisan Collection of Bali brand, misuse of JTV’s trademarks with an intent to confuse JTV’s customers, misuse of JTV’s confidential information, and other intentional and willful actions that have significantly damaged JTV,” the suit alleges.
JTV said it “tired” of Sarda and Ms. Sherman’s behavior, and “asserted a set-off for losses that Sarda’s and Ms. Sherman’s actions have caused it.”
Then in response, the suit charges, “Sarda and Ms. Sherman aggressively asserted spurious breach of contract and intellectual property claims, which are contained in Sarda’s complaint that initiated this lawsuit.”
The lawsuit goes on to say that Sarda and Sherman “hatched a scheme to divert customers to themselves from JTV and the Artisan of Bali brand owned by JTV.”
Those efforts included “undercutting JTV’s sales efforts beginning at least early as 2019 and continuing through Black Friday 2022, Ms. Sherman’s creation (with Sarda) of her own home shopping network, Ms. Sherman’s other violations of (or bad faith attempts to circumvent) the VSA’s [vendor services agreement] and Guest Supplement Terms’ Exclusivity and/or Non-Compete provisions, and Ms. Sherman’s failures to avoid conflicts of interest and actions inconsistent with JTV’s brand, standards of conduct, and policies and procedures,” according to court filings.
As for Sarda’s copyright infringement allegation, JTV said, “Sarda’s copyrights in and to its designs at issue lack sufficient creativity, lack sufficient originality, and/or were not originally authored by Sarda, and thus are invalid, unenforceable, and not protectible.”
In its counterclaim against Sherman, JTV said its buyers first met her at the JCK trade show in 2013 and made a deal to buy some merchandise from her.
“At that time, Sarda was not a brand or vendor that JTV was familiar with, and Sarda’s business was focused on selling to boutiques and other independent jewelry stores,” the countersuit says. “Sarda had both a limited reach and limited presence in the jewelry industry and was looking to expand its sales.”
JTV said net sales under the Artisan Gem Collection of Bali brand grew steadily. The network’s payments to Sarda grew from just over $400,000 in 2014 to over $10 million in 2019.
“JTV is informed and believes that Sarda sold more of its products to JTV than to any of its other customers. Without JTV’s national footprint and sales platform, training and experience the network gave her, Sarda would have been unable to grow its business so much, so quickly,” according to the counterclaim.
JTV, Sarda and Sherman negotiated matters pertaining to product exclusivity and noncompetition.
“Because of the amount of product JTV was purchasing from Sarda, the sizeable investment it was making in promoting its brands, and the visibility Ms. Sherman was gaining, JTV asked for Sarda to agree that all designs of similar product would be exclusive to JTV,” the countersuit say. “Sarda attempted to limit this provision to ‘exact’ designs of the products it sold to JTV. JTV objected to this change, and Sarda agreed to remove it.”
Things really went sour in April 2020, when Sherman launched “Sarda’s Amazon store, through which they sold products that were identical and/or substantially similar to those JTV has purchased from Sarda and that JTV was selling under the Artisan Collection of Bali brand, all discounted to prices below JTV’s prices,” according to the countersuit.
This was done “to confuse JTV’s customers by creating the illusion that Sarda and Artisan Collection of Bali were either one in the same or were related to Sarda or Ms. Sherman … Through this effort, they hoped to gain access to JTV’s customers.”
We admit, it always confused us.
Sherman was also selling her Bali jewelry on a Sarda website she launched, which also didn’t sit well with the JTV honchos in Knoxville.
Sherman’s actions ended up undercutting her sales on JTV, according to the countersuit.
“Indeed, Ms. Sherman’s Black Friday 2022 appearances at JTV was her worst in several years,” it says. “More particularly, and compared to Black Friday 2021, margin on the Artisan of Bali brand was down 20% and net revenue per broadcast minute dropped over 39%. Additionally, the Artisan of Bali brand was 28% under its ‘benchmark,’ a metric JTV uses to measure the productivity of products, and which tracks performance over the preceding 12 months. That was the worst such comparison of any product line shown on Black Friday.”
The countersuit alleges that through their use of social media, Sherman and Sarda created their own home shopping network” to sell their Bali jewelry that can be “accessed through Smart TVs and internet-connected televisions, in addition to desktop computers, laptops, and mobile devices, which are the same methods/devices through which other home shopping networks make their content available.”
This included doing live broadcasts on YouTube as well as Facebook.
Last December, JTV told Sherman it wasn’t renewing its contract with her.