Ninth Circuit Affirms Jim Beam’s Pucker Vodka Trademark Win
Written June 3, 2020
The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on May 17, 2020, affirmed Jim Beam Brand Co’s (Jim Beam) win against a company that accused it of infringing trademarks because the marks in question were dissimilar and customer confusion wasn’t likely. JL Beverage Co. v. Jim Beam Brands Co., 9th Cir., No. 18-16597, unpublished 5/27/20.
JL Beverage sued Jim Beam alleging Beam’s “Pucker” vodka infringed its “Johnny Love Vodka” trademark. Both Johnny Love and Pucker used a pair of lips in advertising. The district court ruled that Beam didn’t infringe Pucker’s trademark because the marks weren’t likely to cause confusion, based on differences between the bottle designs, product names and labels, and JL’s “full, rounded set of lips” and Beam’s stock-art lips, among other things.
The Ninth Circuit affirmed that confusion wasn’t likely, finding that though the lips were “very similar,” the marks as a whole weren’t similar.