Pooey Puitton Proactively Sues The Shit Out Of Louis Vuitton
from the doo-doo dept
All one needs to do to get a sense of how Louis Vuitton, famed maker of bags, views trademark law is do a short review of past stories it's been involved in on this site. What you will come away with is the clear sense of the company as laughably litigious, insanely aggressive in bullying others, and as being entirely devoid of having anything resembling a sense of humor or respect for parody.
And that last bit appears to be resulting in yet another dispute, this time between Louis Vuitton and MGA Entertainment Inc., which makes the Pooey Puitton toy handbag. And, yes, that toy handbag is literally shaped like a piece of poop. Apparently, Louis Vuitton has been making comments to some of MGA's commercial clients that the toy handbag infringes its trademarks, leading to MGA filing suit against LV asking for a declaratory judgement that its parody bag is not in fact infringing.
In a complaint filed on Friday in Los Angeles federal court, MGA Entertainment Inc said no reasonable consumer would mistake Pooey Puitton, which retails for $59.99, for costlier Louis Vuitton handbags.
“The use of the Pooey name and Pooey product in association with a product line of ‘magical unicorn poop’ is intended to criticize or comment upon the rich and famous, the Louis Vuitton name, the LV marks, and on their conspicuous consumption."
All of which puts the Pooey Puitton bag squarely in the category of protected parody. Beyond that, any claim that the public is going to look at the bag as anything other than a joke played on upon LV, rather than having association with the company, is pretty laughable.
But my interest is centered around LV's apparent thinking that anyone is going to mistake a literal piece-of-shit handbag, and think that it was made by Louis Vuitton. That doesn't seem to me to be the kind of claim a luxury handbag maker would want to make, yet here we sit. Or, more likely, the Louis Vuitton folks simply can't help themselves from failing to appreciate the joke and instead have to go the bullying route.
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Filed Under: likelihood of confusion, pooey puitton, trademark
Companies: louis vuitton, mga entertainment
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Think ofr th epurses
This case should have been settled by declaring that people aren't allowed to make fun of them - which is really what this was about. Not confusion, but criticism.
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Re: Think ofr th epurses
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Lawyers creating billable hours?
Maybe Louis Vuitton has told its lawyers to take on the job of tracking down trademark infringers, so their lawyers sue anything that moves so as to generate more billable hours. If so, Vuitton really needs to put their lawyers on a leash.
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- George Carlin
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Re: shinola?
The use of the name for an assembled-in-Détroit wristwatch is a relative neologism.
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'You said it, not me.'
I mean, if they really want to argue that people who see a handbag shaped like a pile of crap will immediately think 'Vuitton' they can, and I would certainly agree with them, but it does seem rather like an admission that people already have 'crap' and 'Vuitton' linked in their minds, and making that clear in legal documents seems like an odd way to go about business.
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Re: 'You said it, not me.'
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LV sues over Shitty Bag
How much would that advertising have cost them to get?
LV didn't play their usual role of sue first, pay bills later.
Instead they tried a whisper campagin to kill off the product by making baseless threats.... one does wonder what business model exists selling LV bags the the Pooey bag together.
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Jurisdiction?
It is a large assumption to presume that a "clear" copyright exemption for parody handbags in your US law will be a slam dunk in a foreign courtroom.
What am I missing?
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Re: Jurisdiction?
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I guess, the attack here is the best defence.
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ummm
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No shit
Create an AD saying "LV,no shit".
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