The North Faces Sues a Kid You Probably Would Have Hated in High School
By Rocky Thompson on December 15th, 2009
Two years ago an 18-year-old began selling The South Butt fleeces, T-shirts, and other apparel with a parody of The North Face logo. TNF has twice blocked The South Butt from obtaining a trademark for their logo, and the 18-year-old who started the company has tried selling the brand back to TNF for $1 million. Now North Face is suing the teenager for patent infringement.
I know nothing of trademark law, but reports say it will be hard for The North Face to win this one. It’s traditionally difficult to prove a parody product infringes on one’s patents. At least North Face can take comfort knowing that there’s an extremely limited segment of people who get their parody fix from outdoor clothing.
Update: More info from USA Today and the Montreal Gazette.
Just FYI, the article you link is pretty bad. Lots of talk about trademark law, then we conclude with patent infringement? The word patent is just plain wrong. This is 100% about trademarks.
Dave is right. I doubt the kid has any idea what patents TNF might have, and even less how to rip them off. It’s all about making fun of the trademark. And parody has a special place not only on the Daily Show, but also in trademark law. TNF lawyers must be bored.
You guys are right, it does seem like a waste of time on TNF’s part. The quality of the merchandise The South Butt sells looks like the low-rent fleece my old store used to sell (not comparable to TNF). Its tagged $60 but we immediately sell it 50% off or more just to make it seem like a deal. Also asking $1M for the company from TNF was a joke, if he’d asked maybe $250K they might have just payed it. The kid could have bought himself a pretty nice house for what really amounts a cheeky idea that most people would have only turned into a HS economics class project.
I think it will be much harder to argue that The South Butt is a parody ( in court ) after having tried to sell it to The North Face for a million dollars. That strikes me as pretty bad faith - a lot like the “domain squatters” of the 1990s who aimed to get rich buying McDonalds.com and selling it to McDonalds.
Perhaps the reason TNF is trying to punish this guy (though 18 isn’t wizened, it is an adult–we’re not talking kids and lemonade stands here) is in fact because he tried to sell them “his” company. Kind of tough to sell the parody of a trademark that you yourself have not sucessfully trademarked yet. It would be like ransom without actually holding a hostage. If TNF had decided they had a spare $1 mil sitting around and paid him when he didn’t own the trademark on “The South Butt” what would stop me from taking that idea? I could start cranking out TSB fleeces of my own. Heck what would they even have been buying from him? This guy is Uli the nihlist “Give us the money Lebwoski!” Walter: “No, without a hostage, there is no ransom. That’s what ransom is. Those are the f____g rules.”