The Line Between Trademark Infringement and Parody

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirms that a canvas tote bag with a graphic image of Louis Vuitton’s trademark is parody, not trademark infringement.

Louis Vuitton Malletier, S.A. v. My Other Bag, Inc., 16-241-cv, 2d Circuit Court of Appeals, Dec. 22, 2016.

Trademarks facilitate purchasing decisions by consumers by signaling that behind certain goods or services stands a particular source. Of course, trademarks can also be used as decoration on t-shirts and other goods; but sometimes, the decoration itself is the trademark — that is, it uniquely identifies the source. Like the red soles of Christian Louboutin, Louis Vuitton’s configuration of the interlocking letters, “LV,” surrounded by flower-like symbols (the “Toile Monogram” design) serves as both decoration and trademark.

Trademark law exists to prevent competitors from copying trademarks for two reasons: first, to protect the consumer’s decision-making process; and, second (in the words of Supreme Court Justice Breyer) to help “assure a producer that it (and not an imitating competitor) will reap the financial, reputation-related rewards associated with a desirable product. The law thereby encourages the production of quality products and simultaneously discourages those who hope to sell inferior products by capitalizing on a consumer’s inability quickly to evaluate the quality of an item offered for sale.” Qualitex Co. v. Jacobson Products Co., Inc., 514 U.S. 159, 163-4 (1995).

In May 2014, Louis Vuitton Malletier, S.A. (“LVM”) sued My Other Bag, Inc. (“MOB”), for reproducing graphics of LVM leather bags on one side of MOB’s canvas tote bag. The other side of the MOB bags read “My Other Bag…” — a reference to the long-standing joke occasionally seen on bumper stickers on unglamorous cars, e.g., “My other car is a Porsche.” MOB used graphics of two different LVM bags, shown here, one with the Toile Monogram design trademark, and the other with the checkerboard “Damier” design, but instead of an interlocking “LV,” MOB used its own initials. Picturing an LVM bag on the side of a canvas tote bag was a joke, but LVM didn’t find it funny.[1] In fact, LVM’s case against MOB is the latest in a series of failed litigation brought by LVM against parodies.

In 2006, LVM went after Haute Diggity Dog, LLC, a small business that manufactured and sold pet products, many of them parodying famous marks, including “Chewy Vuiton” dog toys, which took the form of little plush “handbags” suggesting (but not mimicking) LVM’s Toile Monogram design. (Among other differences, Haute Diggity used an interlocking “CV” instead of “LV”.) LVM claimed trademark infringement and “trademark dilution,” a cause of action granted to famous marks to punish “blurring” (i.e., misappropriating a mark for use on a dissimilar product) and “tarnishment” (misappropriating a mark for use on low quality or unsavory products). LVM also claimed copyright infringement, since the Toile Monogram, as a design existing apart from handbags, is protected by copyright. In addition to objecting to the use of the Toile Monogram mark on dog toys, LVM claimed that the toys were also likely to tarnish LVM’s marks because they “pose a choking hazard for some dogs.”

The District Court slapped down LVM’s claims, and the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed: “Chewy Vuiton” dog toys were successful parodies,[2] and the distinctiveness of LVM’s marks was not threatened by “Chewy Vuiton.” Parody, a form of fair use, is a complete statutory defense to a charge of trademark dilution, but not against trademark infringement (e.g., passing off a product under a third party’s trademark, thereby leading consumers to believe that the product came from the trademark owner).

In 2007, LVM sent a cease and desist letter to Danish artist Nadia Plesner, for selling t-shirts and posters to raise money for the charity “Divest for Darfur.” The artwork showed a malnourished child holding a chihuahua dressed in pink in one arm, and carrying on the other arm a bag that resembled Louis Vuitton’s “Audra” bag, with an altered Toile Monogram design. (Here, the interlocking “LV” was replaced by an interlocking “SL” for the name of the artist’s campaign, “Simple Living.”) Plesner was living in Holland at the time.

Unable to afford to go to fight a court case, Plesner stopped selling the t-shirts and posters. In 2010, however, she repainted the Darfur child in a painting that she titled “Darfurica,” which was exhibited for the first time in the Odd Fellow Palace in Copenhagen in January 2011. By the end of the exhibit, she received an injunction, obtained (unbeknowst to Plesner) by LVM from a court in The Hague. Plesner was ordered to stop showing the painting in the gallery and online, and to pay 5,000 Euros per day until she complied. In May, she went to The Hague and made her case. A month later the court reversed the injunction and ordered LVM to pay part of her legal costs.

Louis Vuitton’s attack on Plesner’s artwork is a real head-scratcher, given that Mattel tried a similar thing in 1999 when it sued artist Tom Forsythe, who produced a series of photographs of a nude and provocatively posed Barbie in or around various household appliances. (She ends up in a blender.) Mattel lost and was ordered to pay the artist $1.8 million in legal fees.

Unlike LVM`s case against Plesner, the case against MOB involved not a work of art, but a commercial product. MOB’s purpose was parody, but to LVM, MOB was merely trading on the strength of the Toile Monogram mark. As in LVM`s failed litigation against Haute Diggity Dog, LVM also claimed both “trademark dilution” and copyright infringement claim.

In order to prove trademark infringement, LVM needed to prevail on a host of factors used to analyze whether the use amounts to an infringement. In the Second Circuit, courts use the “Polaroid Factors,” a set of criteria first mentioned by Judge Friendly in the 1961 case, Polaroid Corp. v. Polarad Electronics Corp., 287 F.2d 492 (2d Cir., 1961). “The problem of determining how far a valid trademark shall be protected with respect to goods other than those to which its owner has applied it,” Judge Friendly wrote, “has long been vexing…”

Where the products are different, the prior owner’s chance of success is a function of many variables: the strength of his mark, the degree of similarity between the two marks, the proximity of the products, the likelihood that the prior owner will bridge the gap [i.e., begin selling directly competing products], actual confusion, and the reciprocal of defendant’s good faith in adopting its own mark, the quality of defendant’s product, and the sophistication of the buyers. Even this extensive catalogue does not exhaust the possibilities — the court may have to take still other variables into account.

Polaroid Corp. v. Polarad Electronics Corp., supra, 287 F.2d at 496.

LVM failed to prevail on any of the Polaroid Factors. Although LVM`s handbags and MOB’s canvas tote bags could theoretically be purchased by the same consumers, there is an enormous gulf between the quality of the products, their prices, and the venues in which they are sold. LVM was unable to come up with any convincing evidence of consumer confusion – and consumers were considered sophisticated enough to know that LVM, whose handbags run upwards of one or two thousand dollars, was not the source of an inexpensive canvas tote bag prominently marked “My Other Bag.” The court also found that there was no likelihood that MOB would be entering the luxury handbag market (i.e., “bridge the gap”).

Unsurprisingly, given the Haute Diggity Dog decision, LVM lost both in the District Court and on appeal to the Second Circuit. LVM attempted to argue that the District Court erred by finding that MOB’s use of the Toile Monogram design was parody, but the Second Circuit would have none of it. “At the same time that they mimic LV’s designs and handbags in a way that is recognizable,” the Second Circuit wrote,

they do so as a [graphic image] on a product that is such a conscious departure from LV’s image of luxury—in combination with the slogan “My other bag”—as to convey that MOB’s tote bags are not LV handbags. The fact that the joke on LV’s luxury image is gentle, and possibly even complimentary to LV, does not preclude it from being a parody.

In any event, the nature of MOB’s business—it sells quite ordinary tote bags with [graphic images] of various luxury-brand handbags, not just LVM’s, printed thereon—and the presence of “My other bag,” an undisputed designation of source, on one side of each bag, independently support summary judgment for MOB on this designation-of-source issue.

LVM fared no better on its copyright claim: “MOB’s parodic use of LVM’s designs,” the Court held, produces a “new expression and message that constitutes transformative use.”

Parodists should probably thank LVM for losing cases involving trademark parody in two federal jurisdictions. In 1994, the Supreme Court ruled in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. that rap group 2 Live Crew’s appropriation of Roy Orbison’s song, “Pretty Woman,” was not copyright infringement, but parody. (As with trademark dilution, parody is a statutory defense against claims of copyright infringement.) Since that decision, the courts have come to embrace the idea that parody should also be permitted (at least under some circumstances) as a defense to trademark infringement. Despite this trend, it has been the practice of many major trademark owners to make overbroad claims and excessive threats, sometimes commencing litigation knowing that the parodist can’t afford to fight, and will quickly give in to their demands. Hopefully, this most recent decision, which has received ample publicity, will make companies like LVM think twice before engaging in such tactics.

Endnotes

[1] The Toile Monogram was first registered with the United States Patent and Trademark Office in 1932. While LVM’s case against MOB was pending in New York, the General Court of the E.U. invalidated the Damier Trademark because it was “a basic and banal feature composed of very simple elements” and lacked any brand-specific features. It is also likely unprotectable in the United States.

[2] For trademark purposes, “[a] ‘parody’ is defined as a simple form of entertainment conveyed by juxtaposing the irreverent representation of the trademark with the idealized image created by the mark’s owner … A parody must convey two simultaneous — and contradictory — messages: that it is the original, but also that it is not the original and is instead a parody. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals v. Doughney, 263 F.3d 359, 366 (4th Cir. 2001). This second message must not only differentiate the alleged parody from the original but must also communicate some articulable element of satire, ridicule, joking, or amusement. Thus, [a] parody relies upon a difference from the original mark, presumably a humorous difference, in order to produce its desired effect. Jordache Enterprises, Inc. v. Hogg Wyld, Ltd., 828 F.2d 1482, 1486 (10th Cir.1987) (finding the use of “Lardashe” jeans for larger women to be a successful and permissible parody of “Jordache” jeans).” Louis Vuitton Malletier S.A v. Haute Diggity Dog LLC, 507 F. 3d 252 (4th Cir. 2007). (Internal quotes omitted.)