Punchbowl, Inc. v. AJ Press, LLC, No. 21-55881 (9th Cir. 2024)
Annotate this CaseIn a trademark dispute between two companies that used the word "Punchbowl" in their marks, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed the district court's summary judgement in favor of AJ Press, LLC. The court held that AJ Press, LLC's use of the Punchbowl mark was not outside the scope of the Lanham Act under the "Rogers test". The Rogers test, which governs disputes over trademarks that are used in expressive works protected by the First Amendment, does not apply when the accused infringer uses a trademark to designate the source of its own goods. The court found that AJ Press, LLC was using the Punchbowl mark to identify and distinguish its news products. The court reversed the district court's judgement and remanded for further proceedings, instructing the district court to proceed to a likelihood-of-confusion analysis under the Lanham Act.
Court Description: Lanham Act The panel reversed the district court’s summary judgment in favor of the defendant in a trademark infringement suit involving two companies that used the word “Punchbowl” in their marks and remanded for further proceedings.
Applying Jack Daniel’s Properties, Inc. v. VIP Products LLC, 599 U.S. 140 (2023), the panel held that the defendant’s use of the Punchbowl mark was not outside the scope of the Lanham Act under the “Rogers test.” Under this test, a trademark dispute concerning an expressive work protected by the First Amendment does not fall within the Lanham Act unless the defendant’s use of the mark was not artistically relevant to the work or explicitly misled consumers as to the source or the content of the work. Jack Daniel’s held that the Rogers test does not apply when the accused infringer has used a trademark to designate the source of its own goods. The panel concluded that, following Jack Daniel’s, the Ninth Circuit’s prior precedents were no longer good law insofar as they held that Rogers applied when an expressive mark was used as a mark, and that the only threshold for applying Rogers was an attempt to apply the Lanham Act to something expressive.
The panel held that Rogers did not apply here because the defendant was using the Punchbowl mark to identify and distinguish its news products. The panel instructed that, on remand, the district court should proceed to a likelihood-of-confusion analysis under the Lanham Act.
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