Question: Do you agree with this statement why or why not?

Did Chewy Vuiton or South Butt violate their opponent's trademark/trade name rights?

Louis Vuitton vs. Chewy Vuiton:

A company called Haute Diggity Dog created a line of canine products called "Chewy Vuiton" which uses a pattern and design modeled after Louis Vuitton's trademarked logo and design. Louis Vuitton sued the company for trademark dilution, however the Judge ruled in favor of Haute Diggity Dog stating, "The fact that the real Vuitton name, marks and dress are strong and recognizable makes it unlikely that a parody particularly one involving a pet chew toy and bed will be confused with the real product."

I disagree with the ruling and I believe Haute Diggity Dog is in fact guilty of Trademark Dilution. While I agree with the Judge that it's unlikely that a person would confuse this brand with the real Louis Vuitton brand, I don't believe that the Chewy Vuiton product line demonstrates a true parody as no commentary, particularly opposing commentary is being made towards Louis Vuitton. They simply adopted the logo and pattern to leech off of Louis Vuitton's recognizability.

With Trademark Dilution, our text defines it as "the unauthorized use of a distinctive and famous mark in a way that impairs the mark's distinctiveness or harms its reputation." and it's the latter of this sentence that I want to speak of. Louis Vuitton is a luxury brand owned by the most dominant luxury brand conglomerate in the world LVMH. Luxury brand's value, is hugely based on it's reputation and image. It require's exclusivity and scarcity to maintain the value of its brand. Associating Louis Vuitton with a knock-off, dog chew toy brand damages the element they rely on to uphold the value of the brand they've created. I believe this therefor demonstrates that Chewy Vuitton dilutes the trademark of Louis Vuitton as it's reputation and brand value is damaged.

The North Face vs. The South Butt:

The South Butt was a clear parody of The North Face. It's name and slogan were both mockeries and inverse in philosophy to The North Face's trademark. While The North Face represents enthusiasm for the outdoors and has a slogan of "Never stop exploring", The South Butt's logo represented laziness and had an opposite slogan of "Never stop relaxing". The logo design was very similar, though different and oriented in a different way, but the font was essentially identical. The North Face was suing for trademark infringement. Our text stipulates that to prove trademark infringement the owner must show that the other party's use of the mark is likely to create confusion about the origin of that party's goods or services.

Because The South Butt can be proven to be a clear parody, I don't believe that there is any proof of confusion over the origin of it's products. The parody is clear because while the brand imitates The North Face, it offers a contrasting commentary to that of The North Face, thus it should be protected.

A similar situation to those above was a case between Jack Daniels and a company called VIP Products that had another dog chew toy that looked like a Jack Daniels bottle. This is actually an interesting case to include in this discussion because it supports the points I've tried to illustrate in both the above cases. After much back and forth, it was determined that the chew toy product was in fact damaging to the reputation of Jack Daniels while they also were unable to prove that the product offered the necessary commentary to be thought of as parody and was not able to be protected that way as well.

Both of these situations seem to be toeing on the line of parody law, and so I believe both would technically not have violated the larger companies trademark or trade name rights. Both situations are 'plays' on the brand names and similar, but not identical logos. I needed to search a bit more about parody law, and here is what I found. "Under United States law, the fair use doctrine allows for the use of a trademark in a parody if it is used for commentary, criticism, new reporting, teaching, or research, even if it would otherwise be considered trademark infringement. However, as discussed above, the parody must transform the original trademark by adding additional elements that help differentiate it from the original brand and make clear it is intended as a parody, rather than a copycat brand. If the parody simply uses the targeted mark in its entirety for its original intended purpose, this could be viewed as trademark infringement." (Source) Most reasonable persons would see "South Butt" and "Chewy Vuiton" as a play on words and most likely not as a theft of trademark. They are both using enough of the original brand to get the association while putting enough satire in it that it should be able to make a case! The problem lies within making money off of producing these goods since neither of these activities were purely for art or commentary purposes.