Source: http://www.vegastrademarkattorney.com/2018/05/
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 02:01:37+00:00

Document:
On May 21, 2018, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California granted a Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings filed by the creators of a Dr. Seuss-Star Trek mash-up parody book entitled “Oh, the Places You’ll Boldly Go!” (the “Boldly” book) against trademark infringement claims brought by Dr. Seuss Enterprises LP (the owner of the intellectual property rights associated with the Dr. Seuss books). See Dr. Seuss Enterprises, L.P. v. ComicMix LLC et al, Case No. 16-cv-02779 (S.D. Cal.) (decision here).
Under the Rogers two-prong test, the title of an expressive work does not violate the Lanham Act “unless the title has no artistic relevance to the underlying work whatsoever, or, if it has some artistic relevance, unless the title explicitly misleads as to the source or the content of the work.” Mattel Inc. v. MCA Records, Inc., 296 F.3d 894, 902 (9th Cir. 2002) (internal quotation marks omitted) (quoting Rogers, 875 F.2d at 999). This test “insulates from restriction titles with at least minimal artistic relevance that are ambiguous or only implicitly misleading but leaves vulnerable to claims of deception titles that are explicitly misleading as to source or content, or that have no artistic relevance at all.” Rogers, 875 F.2d at 1000.
Defendants had argued that there is nothing misleading about its “Boldly” book title and that the use of the title was directly relevant to the underlying creative work. Plaintiff focused its opposition on a specific portion of the Rogers decision – footnote 5 – to argue that this case was different. That footnote 5 stated that the outlined “limiting construction would not apply to misleading titles that are confusingly similar to other titles. The public interest in sparing consumers this type of confusion outweighs the slight public interest in permitting authors to use such titles.” Rogers, 875 F.2d at 999 n.5.
In its order on the motion to dismiss, the Court found that Defendants’ invocation of Plaintiff’s trademarks was relevant to the book’s artistic purposes and that the title did not explicitly mislead as to its source or content. However, with respect to the footnote exception, while the Ninth Circuit had not directly addressed such exception, because other district courts had determined that the exception is applicable, the Court decided that it would not dismiss Plaintiff’s trademark claims on First Amendment grounds pursuant to Rogers.
However, on November 16, 2017, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued its opinion in the case Twentieth Century Fox Television a Division of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. v. Empire Distribution, Inc., 875 F.3d 1192 (9th Cir. 2017). This case involved a dispute between a record label named Empire Distribution and the companies behind the television show Empire (and its portrayal of a fictional music label named “Empire Enterprises”). As expected, the Ninth Circuit invoked the Rogers test in deciding if the allegedly infringing use of EMPIRE as the title of an expressive work was protected by the First Amendment.
Empire Distribution had argued that the limiting construction of the Rogers test did not apply because of footnote 5. However, the Ninth Circuit rejected Empire’s argument for an exception based on footnote 5 – nothing that the footnote had only ever been cited once by an appellate court, and even then the Second Circuit had rejected its applicability. 875 F.3d at 1197 (citing Cliffs Notes, Inc. v. Bantam Doubleday Dell Publ’g Grp., Inc., 886 F.2d 490 (2d Cir. 1989)). The Ninth Circuit stated “[t]he exception the footnote suggests may be ill-advised or unnecessary” because identifying confusingly similar titles “has the potential to duplicate either the likelihood-of-confusion test or the second prong of Rogers” and “conflicts with our precedents, which ‘dictate that we apply the Rogers test in [Lanham Act] § 43(a) cases involving expressive works.’” Id. (alternation in original) (quoting Brown v. Elec. Arts, Inc., 724 F.3d 1235, 1241–42 (9th Cir. 2013)).
As well-put by the court in CI Games S.A. v. Destination Films, No. 2:16-cv-5719-SVW-JC, 2016 WL 9185391 (C.D. Cal. Oct. 25, 2016): “It is clear to the Court that the artistic relevance prong of the Rogers test is meant to ensure that the title in question uses the potential trademark to express or describe its own content rather than merely to attract notoriety using a trademark in its title that is irrelevant to the underlying work.” Id. at *6.
As for the second prong – whether the alleged use explicitly misleads as to the source or content of the work – the question is “whether there was an ‘explicit indication,’ ‘overt claim,’ or ‘explicit misstatement’ that caused . . . consumer confusion.” Brown, 724 F.3d at 1245. (quoting Rogers, 875 F.2d at 1001). The Court noted that not only did no such statement appear in Defendants’ work, but that Defendants actually went out of their way on the Boldly copyright page to inform readers that it was a work of parody that was not associated with or endorsed by Dr. Seuss. While Plaintiff disputed the effectiveness of such disclaimers, “what cannot be disputed is that there is no statement in Boldly to the contrary, i.e., that the work is associated with or endorsed by Plaintiff.” (emphasis in original). Moreover, Defendants’ use of similar text and design for their book title is not enough to be an “explicit misstatement.” Without any clear evidence that the title of Boldly explicitly misleads as to the source of the work, the Court found that the second prong had been satisfied by Defendants.
With both prongs of the Rogers test satisfied, the Court ruled that Defendants were entitled to a judgment on the pleadings as to Plaintiff’s trademark claims relating to the title of Boldly. While Plaintiff had also pled trademark rights in the font and illustration style, because the Court had not determined if Plaintiff had protectable trademark rights in the font and illustration style of the Dr. Seuss book and only analyzed the title of the book (which it had previously determined was a protectable trademark when it analyzed Defendants’ Boldly book title), the Court’s dismissal of Plaintiff’s trademark claims was limited to just those relating to the title of Boldly.
After years of contemplation, I finally decided to go out on my own and established my own law practice which will continue representing clients in connection with various intellectual property matters (trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, and domain names) as well as general business legal matters.

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