Court dismisses Louis Vuitton ‘Poeey’ purse suit
In a victory for fashion brand Louis Vuitton, a US federal court dismissed a suit involving a poop-shaped toy purse called ‘Pooey Puitton’.
Back in late December, toymaker MGA Entertainment filed a declaratory judgment action against Louis Vuitton.
Yesterday, May 14, Judge John Walter of the US District Court for the Central District of California shut down the suit, after finding that MGA Entertainment (the maker of Pooey Puitton) had failed to establish an actual controversy between the parties.
“No reasonable consumer would mistake the Pooey product as being intended to be used as a handbag,” said MGA Entertainment.
The toymaker added: “Louis Vuitton handbags are not manufactured with the sole intention of storing ingredients and materials for the creation of slime or ‘magical unicorn poop’.”
MGA Entertainment went on to claim that Louis Vuitton has a “history of not respecting parody rights in the US and filing vexatious lawsuits against such protected parody”, citing the Louis Vuitton v My Other Bag (MOB) litigation as a prime example.
In 2014, Louis Vuitton filed a claim against MOB, alleging that MOB’s bags that on one side say “My Other Bag ...” and on the other have a Louis Vuitton design, diluted the famous brand.
After a series of appeals, the US Supreme Court denied Louis Vuitton’s petition for certiorari.
While Louis Vuitton may have lost the case, it did end up not having to pay MOB’s legal fees (amounting to nearly $803,000), after the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed a lower court’s decision not to award the fees in March this year.
In the present suit, MGA Entertainment submitted an amended complaint in April 2019, alleging that the fashion brand had filed a trademark infringement and disparagement suit over Pooey Puitton in France.
MGA Entertainment argued that an actual controversy exists because Louis Vuitton “has a history of not respecting parody rights”, but this contention was dismissed by the Californian court.
Walter said: “MGA argues that by filing an action in France concerning EU trademark registrations, Louis Vuitton has asserted claims against MGA in the US concerning Louis Vuitton’s US trademark registrations. The court disagrees.”
According to the judge, an assertion of EU trademark rights is not an assertion of US trademark rights. He added that even though the EU and US marks may “appear visually similar or identical”, it does not eliminate this distinction.
And Walter dismissed MGA Entertainment’s attempt to create controversy by alleging that Louis Vuitton has a history of not respecting parody rights as “unavailing”.
“Rather than looking at past behaviour concerning other unrelated companies and products to determine whether there is an actual controversy here, the court need look only to the fact that Louis Vuitton has not sued MGA Entertainment based on its trademark rights in the US, while it has initiated proceedings in France,” he concluded.
The court granted Louis Vuitton’s motion to dismiss the complaint, without leave to amend, and dismissed all of MGA Entertainment’s claims for relief against the fashion brand with prejudice.
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