Whats Brewing? A roaring partnership

What a refreshing tone to start this year off - especially this year. The name "Sue" got two strongly named players, a T-Rex at the Field Museum in Chicago and Toppling Goliath, a brewery in Iowa into an almost-legal-chest-thumping-match. The Museum has a trademark registration for SUE AT THE FIELD MUSEUM CHICAGO to cover merchandise (e.g. shirts). Toppling Goliath has a trademark registration for PseudoSue for Beer, the label for which shows a roaring T-Rex. Local Chicagoans love their SUE especially when she is all dressed up to cheer teams. 
After much discussion, it was refreshing to learn that the Museum and the Brewery have decided to work together and form a great partnership.
Cheers to that!

For more, read the article by Timothy Geigner.

The Cost of Not Having Thick Skin...Or Hide In This Matter

Followingsuit (Louis Vuitton Malletier, S.A. v. My Other Bag, Inc., 1:2014-cv-03419 ) from SDNY, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed parody as a successful defense against an allegation of trademark dilution wherein the defendants product evoked a famous brand's mark, but sufficiently made clear the lack of association/consumer confusion.

The defendant, My Other Bag (MOB), is an LA based maker of inexpensive canvas tote bags usually with a play on a well-recognized brand bag.  In this particular matter, these bags had on one side the letters MOB intertwined in a cartoonish form of Louis Vitton's (LV) famous toile mark.  On the other side of the bag, the words MY OTHER BAG were printed clearly in a large font.  Louis Vitton sued MOB for trademark infringement, dilution and common law copyright infringement.  

In its defense, MOB stated that its line of bags is inspired from the "novelty bumper stickers, which can sometimes be seen on inexpensive cars claiming that the driver's "other car" is an expensive luxury car.." (See Memo). The bags were a play on the fact that these were not the LV bags, infact they were meant to be the "workhorse totes" meant to carry groceries and dirty gym clothes, which one wouldn't normally do in a LV bag.  Further, the MOB bags retail at $35-50 whereas LV bags cost thousands of dollars and would therefore not be considered a market replacement of the LV bags. Thus, market proximity for the two brands was non-existent. 

A summary judgement was granted in favor of the defendant finding that MOB had sufficiently proved its parody defense. However, it is important to note that while parody is a valid defense for trademark dilution, it is not a ground for trademark registration.