Judge Orders Down 'N Out Burger Joint To Hand Over All Signage To In-N-Out, Which Has Almost No Presence In Australia

from the up-and-in dept

Two years ago we wrote a post about famed burger-slinger In-N-Out's bullshit strategy for keeping its trademarks in Australia active and valid. That strategy amounts to the chain doing a popup restaurant briefly once every five years, essentially the minimum to keep a trademark active through use in the country. This has been going on for some time, which makes it fairly clear that In-N-Out has no real plans to have a permanent presence in Australia. And, yet, it goes about keeping its trademarks active.

Why? Well, at least in part, apparently, so that it can bully other companies that might brand themselves in a similar fashion. From our earlier post, In-N-Out went after an Australian burger chain calling itself Down 'N Out, which used marketing that was clearly an homage to the California chain. That kind of homage would certainly land a company in trademark hot water in a competing market... except In-N-Out is only in the Australian market in the most transient sense possible. Despite that, an Australian court recently ruled that Down 'N Out wasn't complying with its trademark ruling in favor of In-N-Out and, even though the former plans to appeal the ruling, it must now turn over all physical signage for Down 'N Out to In-N-Out and destroy all digital material for that brand as well.

In May, Hashtag Burgers again drew the ire of In-N-Out by setting up a pop-up Down N' Out food truck in Marrickville. It has said it plans to lodge an appeal against the decision. Justice Katzmann said her decision was "not to be treated as provisional" pending the outcome of any appeal. She refused to grant a stay of her decision to stop it taking effect during the appeal process.

Justice Katzmann ordered Hashtag Burgers to hand over to In-N-Out's Australian lawyers within 60 days all material bearing the Down N' Out logo including "signage, packaging, promotional material, advertising, brochures, pamphlets, merchandise, stationery and business cards".

Ironically, that handing over of branding will likely take a great deal of postage to complete because, again, In-N-Out doesn't have any actual presence in Australia. Instead, they'll likely have to turn that material over to the California chain's local lawyers while the appeal process runs its course. But let's not lose sight of how laughable this all is. In-N-Out doesn't have a presence in Australia beyond a popup store strategy that goes off twice a decade. In other words, the court is aggressively ruling against an entity within the country and in favor of a foreign company blatantly making a farce of that country's trademark laws.

Yes Down 'N Out used homage branding harkening back to In-N-Out. And yes its executives have joked around in past communications that they might want to change that branding to avoid getting sued. All of that would be great evidence of willfull trademark infringement... if In-N-Out had any customers in Australia to potentially confuse. But a handful of popup store burger-buyers once every five years seems to me to be a bit of a stretch.

Filed Under: australia, competition, down 'n out, homage, trademark
Companies: hashtag burgers, in-n-out