Court Dismisses Dumb Trademark Suit Between Dairy And Fishing Tackle Companies
from the milking-it dept
Part of the fun of covering the sort of silly trademark disputes that we do here at Techdirt is seeing just how far companies, most often large companies, will go in trying to apply protectionist habits where they don't belong. This typically manifests itself in the key marketplace aspect of trademark law, where the brands in question are to be competing for customers who might become confused for an infringement to have occurred. Too often this aspect of the law appears to go ignored in claims of infringement, or else the concept of competitive marketplaces is stretched to the point of absurdity. As I said, this is often times amusing to us, because we're strange.
Take a recent suit brought against Land O Lakes, a company that makes fishing tackle, and Land O' Lakes, a company that makes dairy products.
James Hugunin manufactures and sells fishing tackles under the name Land O Lakes, after a region in northern Wisconsin popular among fishermen. However, a large agricultural cooperative in Minnesota named Land O'Lakes took issue with Hugunin's use of the name. The cooperative, which sells butter and other dairy products, has been using the name since the 1920s. It demanded Hugunin pay for a license to use the name, or give up his trademark.Here's a fun thought experiment: precisely how many times would the average person have to hit themselves in the head with a hammer before they found themselves standing before a Land O Lakes spinner bait lure trying to decide if it was actually a stick of butter? I have no idea how to answer that question with anything other than: many. But Land O' Lakes is large, and likely has many well-coifed lawyer-types on retainer, which is how you get the company's representatives actually filing a complaint for this sort of thing.
Fortunately, the court made it clear in its ruling that it wasn't buying it.
We're puzzled that the dairy company should have been worried by Hugunin's use of the same trademark," U.S. Circuit Judge Richard Posner said, writing for the Seventh Circuit's three-judge panel. While Land O'Lakes advertises its dairy products in fishing magazines, and even sponsors a [fishing] competition, there is no chance its products could be confused with Hugunin's fishing tackle, the panel found.Land O' Lakes had argued in its complaint that the market similarity and/or potential customer confusion here would stem from the fact that the dairy company sponsors fishing events and advertises in fishing magazines. It's a strange argument to make, as one might imagine it being a hard sell for Buick to try to control the brand names of golf equipment manufacturers just because they sponsor a PGA event. Advertising into a market doesn't make you a part of that market.
It would be strange indeed for a dairy company to manufacture a product so remote from milk, butter, and cream, and there is no sign that the dairy company intends to take the plunge. The company sponsors the angling tournament and advertises in fishing magazines because fishermen, like the rest of us, are consumers of dairy products.
As a result, the court tossed the suit, regardless of how much Land O' Lakes chose to cry over spilled milk.
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Filed Under: butter, fishing, james hugunin, land o'lakes, trademark
Companies: land o'lakes
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Moooooooooooooot!
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I haven't the foggiest idea. But I bet it would be zero times to make you wonder if they are maybe the same company.
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However, the tackle company has a Dairy company using its trade name *in fishing competitions and magazines* -- it seems to me that if anyone has a right to complain, it's Land O Lakes, NOT Land O'Lakes. The dairy company is using its name in the other vendor's market, and there's an ever so remote chance that THIS might cause product confusion ("I went to buy a spinner, and they sent me a crate of butter!"). You might even call this bait and switch.
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The same goes for your Coke example. As long ans the fishing company doesn't use a red and white script logo or try to sell their product in funny looking bottles, there should be no confusion.
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What if the butter company did start making fishing gear?
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Re: What if the butter company did start making fishing gear?
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Coca-cola is a made up name created by the company for one of its products. There is no prior history for the word. Coke has a better case than the Land o'Lakes dairy company but I think they would still loose. As long as there is no direct competition and no attempt to imply a relationship, there should be no confusion.
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"Here's a fun thought experiment: precisely how many times would the average person have to hit themselves in the head with a hammer before they found themselves standing before a Land O Lakes spinner bait lure trying to decide if it was actually a stick of butter?"
They wouldn't have to think the lure was butter, they'd just have to be confused about whether the dairy products and the fishing tackle have the same source of origin (i.e. ultimately stem from the same company). That's also a stretch, and I doubt there are many dairy companies that dabble in fishing tackle or vice-versa. But it's the source of the products, not confusion about the identity of the products themselves, that is the issue. The court was right in its assessment of this.
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Where the confusion begins
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However, speaking as a consumer who does not live in (or anywhere near) that region of the world: if I ran across "Land O Lakes"-branded fishing gear, my first reaction would be "Are they the same people who make the butter?" or "What is a butter brand doing on fishing gear??". (Although I am aware of the presence of the apostrophe in "Land O' Lakes", I doubt that I would have considered its absence significant in this instance, prior to reading this article.)
As such, there does seem to be some chance of consumer confusion - not between products, but in terms of implied association and thus potential endorsement.
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Hallmark the greeting card company and Haulmark the trailer manufacturing company?
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The lawyers' view...
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I sympathize with your line of argument, but are you sure other businesses and government entities predate the dairy cooperative founded in 1921 (Wikipedia)? It looks like the cooperative chose the "o" spelling because they knew "of" would put it in the public domain.
The towns in Wisconsin and Florida were named around 1950, by which time the cooperative's brand had saturated the country. Perhaps, however, the cooperative waived some rights by failing to sue the Wisconsin (and Florida) towns, at least for businesses operating near those towns.
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