Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-15-02815/USCOURTS-ca7-15-02815-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 840
Nature of Suit: Trademark
Cause of Action: 

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In the 

United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ 

No. 15-2815 

JAMES G. HUGUNIN, LAND O’ LAKES OUTDOORS, INC., and 

LAND O’LAKES TACKLE CO., INC., 

Plaintiffs-Appellants, 

v.

LAND O’ LAKES, INC., 

Defendant-Appellee. 

____________________ 

Appeal from the United States District Court for the 

Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. 

No. 11 C 9098 — Joan B. Gottschall, Judge. 

____________________ 

ARGUED JANUARY 21, 2016 — DECIDED MARCH 1, 2016 

____________________ 

Before POSNER, EASTERBROOK, and KANNE, Circuit Judges. 

POSNER, Circuit Judge. James Hugunin, the principal 

plaintiff (the others are two companies he owns), manufactures and sells fishing tackle. Although he lives in Illinois 

and his companies are incorporated there, he began selling 

his tackle in a town in northeastern Wisconsin called Land 

O’ Lakes because it is located in a region dotted with lakes 

and therefore attractive to fishermen—the region is also 

Case: 15-2815 Document: 25 Filed: 03/01/2016 Pages: 8
2 No. 15-2815 

called Land O’ Lakes. Since his first sale, made in 1997 to a 

Wisconsin bait shop, Hugunin’s enterprise has grown to a 

point at which his fishing tackle is sold to retailers in a number of states. In 2000 the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office 

registered LAND O LAKES as the trademark of his fishing 

tackle. 

As it happens, Minnesota, which adjoins Wisconsin, is 

the home of a large agricultural cooperative named Land O’ 

Lakes, Inc. that sells butter and other dairy products 

throughout the United States. It uses the same trademark on 

its products as Hugunin’s companies do on their products—

LAND O LAKES—and has been doing so since the 1920s, 

when the company was formed. 

In 1997—the year Hugunin began selling fishing tackle—

the dairy company became the official dairy sponsor of a 

sport-fishing tournament called the Wal-Mart FLW Tour and 

began advertising its dairy products in fishing magazines. 

Three years later, having learned that Hugunin had registered LAND O LAKES as the trademark of his fishing tackle, 

the dairy company wrote him that LAND O LAKES was its

trademark, was “famous” because it had been in use since 

long before Hugunin had appeared on the scene, and that 

Hugunin was infringing it and to be permitted to continue 

using it would need a license from the dairy company. He 

refused either to apply for a license or to give up the trademark, thereby precipitating a proceeding by the dairy company in the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board of the U.S. 

Patent and Trademark Office opposing registration of Hugunin’s trademark. (The original registration had lapsed; 

Land O’ Lakes was opposing Hugunin’s application to reCase: 15-2815 Document: 25 Filed: 03/01/2016 Pages: 8
No. 15-2815 3 

register the trademark.) That proceeding is in a state of suspended animation pending the outcome of this case. 

We’re puzzled that the dairy company should have been 

worried by Hugunin’s use of the same trademark. Though 

besides sponsoring the fishing tournament the company has 

advertised in fishing magazines and made other appeals to 

fishermen to buy its dairy products, it neither makes nor 

sells any devices or materials used in fishing (such as hooks, 

lines, sinkers, floats, rods, reels, baits, lures, spears, nets, 

gaffs, traps, waders, and tackle boxes—compendiously, fishing tackle)—any products, therefore, that might be confused 

with Hugunin’s fishing tackle. It would be strange indeed 

for a dairy company to manufacture a product so remote 

from milk, butter, and cream, and there is no sign that the 

dairy company intends to take the plunge. The company 

sponsors the angling tournament and advertises in fishing 

magazines because fishermen, like the rest of us, are consumers of dairy products. All it advertises in those magazines are dairy products. 

Equally puzzling, however, is why Hugunin and his 

companies are suing the dairy company for trademark infringement when there is nothing to suggest that the dairy 

company is thinking of making or selling fishing tackle. Can 

one imagine Land O’ Lakes advertising: “we sell the finest 

dairy products and the best fishing tackle”? It might even 

benefit Hugunin to have consumers confuse his modest enterprise with the mighty Land O’ Lakes and thus assume, 

albeit incorrectly, that they were buying their fishing tackle 

from a giant rather than a pygmy. Unsurprisingly there is no 

evidence of any such confusion.

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Hugunin claims to have encountered difficulty in interesting investors in his companies because they’re afraid the 

dairy company will sue the companies and may succeed in 

enjoining their use of the trademark, which indeed would 

hurt their sales. Presumably he filed this suit in order to 

preempt such a suit by the dairy company—and sure 

enough the dairy company counterclaimed, charging that 

the use of the LAND O LAKES trademark by Hugunin’s 

companies was diluting the value of the dairy company’s 

identical trademark. 

The district judge dismissed the dilution claim after a 

bench trial as barred by laches (i.e., the dairy company had 

waited too long to make the claim), though even if laches 

hadn’t been in the picture the dairy company would not 

have prevailed. As explained in Ty Inc. v. Perryman, 306 F.3d 

509, 511 (7th Cir. 2002) (citations omitted), one theory underlying the dilution theory of trademark infringement is that 

consumer search costs will rise if a trademark becomes associated with a variety of unrelated products. Suppose an upscale restaurant calls itself “Tiffany.” There is little danger that the consuming 

public will think it’s dealing with a branch of the 

Tiffany jewelry store if it patronizes this restaurant. 

But when consumers next see the name “Tiffany” 

they may think about both the restaurant and the 

jewelry store, and if so the efficacy of the name as 

an identifier of the store will be diminished. Consumers will have to think harder—incur as it were 

a higher imagination cost—to recognize the name 

as the name of the store. So “blurring” is one form 

of dilution. 

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No. 15-2815 5 

Now suppose that the “restaurant” that adopts the 

name “Tiffany” is actually a striptease joint. Again, 

and indeed even more certainly than in the previous case, consumers will not think the striptease 

joint under common ownership with the jewelry 

store. But because of the inveterate tendency of the 

human mind to proceed by association, every time 

they think of the word “Tiffany” their image of the 

fancy jewelry store will be tarnished by the association of the word with the strip joint. So “tarnishment” is a second form of dilution. Analytically it is 

a subset of blurring, since it reduces the distinctness of the trademark as a signifier of the trademarked product or service.

It’s difficult to fit the present case into either species of 

dilution. Everyone recognizes “Tiffany” as the name of a 

luxury jewelry store on Fifth Avenue in New York (with 

stores in other major cities), and seeing the name on a hotdog stand a passerby might think of the jewelry store and of 

the incongruity of a hot-dog stand’s having the same name; 

he might think the jewelry store’s cachet impaired by the coincidence and switch his patronage to Cartier or Harry Winston. Many consumers would recognize the name “LAND O 

LAKES” as referring to the dairy company, but we can’t see 

how the company could be hurt by the use of the same name 

by a seller just of fishing tackle. The products of the two 

companies are too different, and the sale of fishing tackle is 

not so humble a business as the sale of hot dogs by street 

vendors. And so it is beyond unlikely that someone dissatisfied with LAND O LAKES fishing tackle would take revenge 

on the dairy company by not buying any of its products, or 

that a customer would have difficulty identifying Land O’ 

Lakes’ dairy products because he had seen the LAND O 

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LAKES mark used on Hugunin’s fishing tackle. Land O’ 

Lakes products are advertised on their labels as dairy or other food products (such as instant cappuccino mixes), never 

as products relating to fishing. 

And the dairy company’s mark is itself derivative from 

Minnesota’s catchphrase “Land of 10,000 Lakes,” see Wikipedia, “Minnesota,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota 

(visited February 29, 2016), a phrase in such widespread use 

that the company could not insist that it was the sole lawful 

user of the phrase in advertising for all products.

The disparity in size between the contenders deserves 

emphasis. In 2012, the last year for which we have statistics, 

Land O’ Lakes’ sales of dairy foods exceeded $4 billion, 

while Hugunin’s sales were less than $30,000. It’s hard to believe that a giant dairy company wants to destroy or annex 

Hugunin’s tiny fishing-tackle business, or that Hugunin’s 

tackle sales are being kept down by Land O’ Lakes’ having 

an identical trademark. 

As for Hugunin’s claim of trademark infringement, 

which the district judge dismissed on Land O’ Lakes’ motion 

for summary judgment, it is not based on a contention that 

Land O’ Lakes’ trademark is invalid because it’s identical to 

his trademark; that would be absurd, because Land O’ Lakes 

has been using the trademark since the 1920s. His contention 

is that he is the first user of the mark in the fishing industry 

and therefore has priority over Land O’ Lakes’ use of the 

mark in that industry. Reverse confusion, as Hugunin’s theory is called, refers to the situation in which a junior user of 

a trademark uses his size and market penetration to overwhelm the senior, but smaller, user. Custom Vehicles, Inc. v. 

Forest River, Inc., 476 F.3d 481, 484 (7th Cir. 2007); Peaceable 

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No. 15-2815 7 

Planet, Inc. v. Ty, Inc., 362 F.3d 986, 992–93 (7th Cir. 2004). 

Hugunin argues that consumers will be deceived into believing that the dairy company is the actual producer of his fishing tackle. But the dairy company’s use of the same trademark is confined to products so different from Hugunin’s 

that few if any consumers would think that simply by virtue 

of having an identical trademark the dairy company was 

competing with Hugunin in a different industry. See Sands, 

Taylor & Wood Co. v. Quaker Oats Co., 978 F.2d 947, 958 (7th 

Cir. 1992); 2 J. Thomas McCarthy, Trademarks and Unfair 

Competition § 24:3, at 166 (1991 Supp.); see also McGrawEdison Co. v. Walt Disney Productions, 787 F.2d 1163, 1166 (7th 

Cir. 1986). 

A typical fishing-themed ad by the dairy company depicts the “Land O’ Lakes Walleye Pro,” a champion fisherman whom Land O’ Lakes sponsors in fishing competitions 

in return for his promoting its dairy products. The fisherman 

is shown sitting next to packages of Land O’ Lakes butter 

and cheese. The dairy company’s logo is also found on fishing boats during tournaments. But just as no one watching a 

NASCAR race and seeing a racing car emblazoned with 

Budweiser’s logo would think that the beer company had 

entered the automobile industry, so no one reading the 

“Walleye Pro” ad or seeing a boat sponsored by the dairy 

company would think that the advertiser sells fishing tackle. 

Hugunin also complains that the dairy company has 

permitted some producers and sellers of fishing tackle—

competitors of Hugunin’s companies—to use its trademark. 

Were those firms licensees of Land O’ Lakes, Hugunin might 

have a colorable claim of trademark infringement because 

then Land O’ Lakes could be thought to be intentionally enCase: 15-2815 Document: 25 Filed: 03/01/2016 Pages: 8
8 No. 15-2815 

couraging other fishing-tackle companies to infringe Hugunin’s mark, as that would increase Land O’ Lakes’ revenues from licensing. In that event the dairy company might 

well be guilty of what is called secondary liability or contributory infringement. But there is no evidence that Land O’ 

Lakes has issued any such licenses or is even aware that other producers of fishing tackle have used its mark. 

So in this unusual case two firms sued each other though 

neither had been, is, or is likely to be harmed in the slightest 

by the other. The suit was rightly dismissed. 

Case: 15-2815 Document: 25 Filed: 03/01/2016 Pages: 8