North Face Continues To File Questionable Legal Claims Against Parodies

from the again? dept

Wed, Nov 28th 2012 12:37pm — Mike Masnick

Remember outdoor clothing company The North Face's ridiculously counterproductive war against The South Butt parody line of clothes? That involved a bogus lawsuit with a variety of twists and turns, eventually leading to a settlement. There was an epilogue, however, as the guy who had started The South Butt reformed as Butt Face. And, of course, all this did was make The North Face look silly and unable to take a joke.

It appears that the company has not developed a sense of humor yet. Jake Rome points us to a story of how The North Face has filed takedown notices to Flickr/Yahoo, because a guy had posted some photos of parody patches for "Hey Fuck Face." You can see the main image here.

This photo was taken down, as were a few other photos, mostly of the patch attached to a gun. The fact that those images are up is because the user, "mr.smashy," filed a counter notice and so far it appears that The North Face has chosen not to go the legal route.

Dear mr.smashy,

We have received a Notice of Infringement from The North
Face VF Outdoor, Inc. via the Yahoo! Copyright/IP Team and
have removed the following photo(s) from your photostream:

"Hey Fuck Face":
www.flickr.com/photos/wmode/3239565297/
"hey fuck face":
www.flickr.com/photos/wmode/230342956/
"AR-15 A4 MWS":
www.flickr.com/photos/wmode/3466868577/
"Buttstock Mag Pouch":
www.flickr.com/photos/wmode/3274481679/
"BWUSA": www.flickr.com/photos/wmode/1425898484/

Subsequent Notices of Infringement filed against your
account will result in further action that may include
termination without warning.

mr.smashy notes that his counter notice claimed fair use, pointing out that the patch is a parody and that he's not actually selling anything, so there's no issue of commercial usage. He also sent the takedown to ChillingEffects (good move!). This really seems like yet another overzealous move by lawyers at the North Face misinterpreting the need to "protect" their trademark. Let the parodies live and people will love your brand. Go after them like this and it just turns people off completely.

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Filed Under: fuck face, parody, trademark
Companies: the north face

8 Comments

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weneedhelp (profile), 28 Nov 2012 @ 1:01pm

Design
He came up with the design after reading some comments from OOTB, boB, and average_joe.
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- DH's Love Child (profile), 28 Nov 2012 @ 1:21pm
  
  Re: Design
  Well, at least the moniker.
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Pixelation, 28 Nov 2012 @ 1:40pm

Hey Fuck Face in The South Butt
The North Face logo looks a lot like a couple of Slinkies doing it doggy style.
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Nov 2012 @ 1:53pm

Interesting, it looks like the guy pixelated the logo on his hat (presumably that one was not a parody) in one of the pictures

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wmode/1425898484/
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That Anonymous Coward (profile), 28 Nov 2012 @ 5:50pm

he calls himself mr.smashy and has a gun.
yeah... that'll work out well...
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- btrussell (profile), 29 Nov 2012 @ 3:24am
  
  Re:
  Hulk smash gun.
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jakerome (profile), 29 Nov 2012 @ 8:33am

Sweet!
Thanks for picking up the story. The good news part of this story is that since Flickr reformed their take down process, fraudulent notices now only result in temporary removal of the images. Still a lot of misconceptions in the Flickr community that Flickr "must" immediately comply with a takedown notice, as if there are automatic penalties for inquiring with the subject first or evaluating the validity of the notice themselves.

But hey, one step at a time.
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JustMe (profile), 29 Nov 2012 @ 11:15am

This is why I stopped buying North Face
True story
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