Intellectual Property Law

Court Finds Logo Either Protected as Parody or Not Likely to Cause Confusion

By Michael Atkins

No TRO: Plaintiff Protectmarriage.com’s logo (left)
and defendant Courage Campaign’s derivative logo

“[P]laintiff is unlikely to overcome the conclusion that defendant’s use of the mark is protected under the First Amendment….”

That’s the conclusion the Eastern District of California reached Jan. 20 in denying plaintiff Protectmarriage.com - Yes on 8’s motion for a temporary restraining order against defendant Courage Campaign’s use of an allegedly infringing logo.

Protectmarriage.com supports traditional marriage and helped place California’s Proposition 8 on the ballot. Its logo depicts a man and a woman with two kids.

Courage Campaign supports same-sex couples’ right to marry. Its logo is derived from Protectmarriage.com’s logo. It depicts two women with two kids.

Protectmarriage filed suit against Courage Campaign and sought a temporary restraining order prohibiting Courage Campaign from using its logo. Courage Campaign opposed the motion on the ground its logo is protected parody.

The court found found Courage Campaign’s logo is either protected by the First Amendment or is not likely to cause confusion. Either way, the court found Protectmarriage.com is unlikely to succeed on the merits of its infringement claim.

“In this case, the logo itself is artistic,” the court said. “Moreover, the broader website, while perhaps not artistic, is undeniably expressive of a political idea, and both political and artistic expression are protected by the First Amendment. Defendant’s use of the mark has relevance to the expressive message, namely, support for homosexual marriages, and specifically, opposition to recent California efforts to limit the right to such marriages. This support is expressed by the modification of the ‘father’ figure in the original mark to depict a second ‘mother.’ Further, the mark does not explicitly mislead as to the source of the work. Any potential for confusion or misdirection is obviated by the images and text that uniformly accompany defendant’s use of the mark, namely, photos of homosexual couples together with text explicitly endorsing homosexual marriage. Plaintiff is unlikely to succeed in showing that a visitor to the [defendant’s] prop8trialtracker website is likely to be confused as to whether plaintiff is affiliated with the site.”

The case cite is Protectmarriage.com - Yes on 8 v. Courage Campaign, __ F.Supp. __, 2010 WL 325571, No. 10-132 (E.D.Cal. Jan. 20, 2010).

Full post as published by Seattle Trademark Lawyer on January 31, 2010 (boomark / email).