Alliance for Good Government v. Coalition for Better Government, No. 17-30859 (5th Cir. 2018)
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Alliance filed suit seeking to enjoin Coalition's use of its logo for federal trademark infringement under the Lanham Act. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of Alliance and enjoined Coalition from using both its name and logo in political advertisements.
The Fifth Circuit affirmed and held that Coalition failed to properly raise threshold questions concerning the applicability of the Lanham Act to what it characterized as political non-commercial speech. Therefore, the court declined to reach those questions. The court also held that the district court did not err in deciding that the birds on the logos at issue were identical. The panel held that the evidence established without dispute that Alliance's logo was a valid composite mark and that the use of Coalition's logo infringed Alliance's composite mark as a matter of law. The panel did modify the court's injunction in one respect, finding that the injunction restrained Coalition from using its name as well as its logo. Therefore, that aspect of the injunction was overbroad.
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