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Tom Patti, a glass artist based out of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, filed a lawsuit in US District Court in Springfield, Massachusetts on Wednesday, claiming that the plastic bottle mount that holds the Sean John Unforgivable fragrance bottle is in violation of his copyrighted work, a pair of glass sculptures that he produced in the 1980s.

This, according to Jonathan Saltzman of the Boston Globe, who notes the lawsuits defendants as Diddy and the supposed designers of the holder, James Gager and Johan Liden. Saltzman sought comment from all three, with Diddy's rep offering no comment and the designers being unreachable.

In a lawsuit filed in US District Court in Springfield Wednesday, Tom Patti, 65, contends that the cologne's packaging - the bottle fits inside an attractive ridged plastic cradle - is a ripoff of two copyrighted tabletop glass sculptures he created in the early 1980s called "Compacted Gray With Clear and Ribs'' and ``Modulated Solar Airframe.''

"A couple of years ago, my phone started ringing," the glass artist said yesterday in a phone interview. "Everywhere I went, people started congratulating me on the success of my fragrance container. I didn't know what they were talking about. Eventually, I realized that Combs had replicated my work."

The article features a side by side comparison of the Unforgivable holder and one of the sculptures and, to be honest, I see where there is a similarity, but only in vague ways that would not imply any sort of infringement or, perhaps, even influence. You can't trademark "gray box with lines" and if I put the two boxes side by side, that is the only similarity I see. Check out Patti's work and now look at the Sean John bottle holder.

The Sean John cradle is different in that the lines themselves are noticeably different. They are also on all sides and the bottle does not have the bulge that appears in the Patti sculpture. The Sean John bottle also has a different level of translucence and is more open ended.

For a legally minded opinion, I spoke with Jonathan Bailey, a copyright and plagiarism consultant who authors PlagiarismToday, a blog aimed at discussing and analyzing news and issues related to plagiarism and copyright infringement. I co-host the Copyright 2.0 Show alongside Jonathan.

"Though I agree that there are some similarities between the two products. I feel that there are more than enough differences to distinguish them and the similarities most likely can not be copyrighted at all," he said. "I sympathize with the sculptor in that he feels his work was misused, but I think the law is against him on this one. Typically, on these types of derivative work cases, I tend to "bet" on it not being a derivative as the bar for these things is set pretty high and it's a hard measure to meet on the best of cases."