Gentle Monster vs. Blue Elephant: The First Arrest for Design Imitation in K-Fashion

[The Public=Yoo Su-jin] The Korea Intellectual Property Office has indicted Blue Elephant CEO Choi Jin-woo (38) and two others for violating the Unfair Competition Prevention and Trade Secret Protection Act after importing and selling products that copied Gentle Monster designs. Authorities say this is the first case where a suspect was detained solely for imitating a product’s shape.

On the 17th, the Patent Office’s Special Judicial Police for Technical Design (known as the Technical Police) and the Daejeon District Prosecutor’s Office’s Patent Crime Investigation Division announced they had indicted three people, including Blue Elephant’s CEO Choi, on charges of importing and selling items that mimicked another company’s product shapes.

According to investigators, Choi launched an eyewear label in 2019 despite having no industry experience and ran the operation without dedicated design staff. He allegedly photographed Gentle Monster’s popular sunglasses and other items, then sent those images to overseas manufacturers to produce the knockoffs.

Police say the knockoffs included 51 different models and about 321,000 pieces, with estimated sales of roughly 12.3 billion KRW (about $9.225 million). These products were sold between February 2023 and June 2025. Authorities also allege that from August 2023 to June 2025, Blue Elephant imported 44 knockoff models totaling about 413,000 pieces.

Of the 51 disputed models, 29 matched the originals at better than a 95% rate in 3D surface-scan analysis within a 1 mm error margin. Eighteen of those exceeded a 99% match rate—what investigators call “dead copy” level.

Gentle Monster reportedly invests at least a year of R&D and about 50 specialists into each product. Officials say the brand suffered reputational harm and significant sales losses because of the knockoffs. The Patent Office warned the case threatens the broader K-fashion industry, which has grown on originality and fresh ideas.

Investigators noted that fast fashion cycles often mean many designs go unregistered. In this instance, all 51 affected Gentle Monster designs were unregistered.

The Technical Police explained they chose to detain and indict Choi—the first such detention in an unregistered-design copying case—because he replicated new products without creative effort, generated rapid, high sales, and caused harm to the industry overall.

To stop the concealment of criminal proceeds, authorities sought asset preservation against Blue Elephant. The Technical Police filed petitions in July and September last year for 5.56 billion KRW (about $4.17 million) and 2.26 billion KRW (about $1.695 million), respectively. The Daejeon District Court approved asset preservation totaling 7.8 billion KRW (about $5.85 million).

Investigators also secured roughly 150,000 knockoff items that Choi had in storage, obtained through voluntary submission, to prevent further distribution.

Separately, the Patent Office amended the law in 2017 so that selling an unregistered design that directly copies a new product’s form within three years of its release can now carry criminal penalties.

Kim Yong-seon, head of the Intellectual Property Office, said, “This case is meaningful as the first instance of criminal punishment and detention for copying and selling the form of an unregistered new product, closing a blind spot in design protection.” He added, “Going forward, the Intellectual Property Office will work to ensure creativity and innovation are properly protected, and it will punish those who free-ride on design infringement or copy new-product forms.”