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IP BLAWG
Trademarks for the Humor Impaired
Beverly A. Berneman
1/31/17Louis Vuitton found nothing funny about “My Other Bag is a Louis Vuitton”. %CUT% My Other Bag (“MOB”) manufactured and sold canvas bags that replicate pictures of famous and expensive brands. One of its bags replicated the Louis Vuitton bag. If you look at the picture of the bag, you can see that no one would mistake this for a real Louis Vuitton bag. The bag is meant to parody high priced leather goods and that not everyone can afford them. However, Louis Vuitton did not appreciate the humor. So it sued MOB for trademark infringement, dilution by blurring and copyright infringement. The District Court granted summary judgment to MOB stating that this was an obvious attempt at humor and is not likely to cause confusion. The Second Circuit agreed and affirmed the judgment. The Second Circuit noted that “A parody must convey two simultaneous – and contradictory – messages: that it is the original, but also that it is not the original and is instead a parody”.
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