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Explore the latest in patent, trademark, and copyright cases on the Merchant & Gould LLP blog. Stay informed with expert insights on intellectual property law updates.

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Last week, the&nbsp;U.S. Court of Appeals for the&nbsp;Ninth Circuit&nbsp;issued an opinion in&nbsp;<a href="https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2020/12/18/19-55348.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Seuss Enters., L.P. v.&nbsp;ComicMix&nbsp;LLC</a>,&nbsp;19-55348&nbsp;(December 18, 2020),&nbsp;reversing the district court’s summary judgment in favor of the defendant and&nbsp;holding the&nbsp;defendant&nbsp;could not sustain a fair use defense. It also affirmed summary judgment granted to the defendant on the plaintiff’s trademark infringement claim.&nbsp;&nbsp;

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In 2016,&nbsp;defendant&nbsp;(ComicMix)&nbsp;agreed with an author of&nbsp;Star Trek&nbsp;episodes to create a mash-up of Star Trek and&nbsp;the Dr. Seuss primer&nbsp;Oh, the Places You’ll Go!&nbsp;(Go!).&nbsp;It&nbsp;called the mash-up&nbsp;Oh, the Places You’ll Boldly Go!&nbsp;(Boldly Go!).&nbsp;The creators thought their&nbsp;mash-up&nbsp;would be “pretty well protected by parody,”&nbsp;but&nbsp;acknowledged&nbsp;“people in black robes&nbsp;may disagree.”&nbsp;(According to the Ninth Circuit, “Indeed, we do.”)

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Dr. Seuss Enterprises, L.P. (“Seuss”) owns the intellectual property in Dr. Seuss’s works.&nbsp;&nbsp;Seuss sued&nbsp;ComicMix&nbsp;for copyright and trademark infringement.&nbsp;The district court dismissed the trademark infringement claim&nbsp;under Rule 12(c). The district court&nbsp;also&nbsp;granted&nbsp;ComicMix’s&nbsp;summary judgment and dismissed the copyright infringement claim,&nbsp;citing&nbsp;fair use. Seuss appealed.&nbsp;

The Ninth Circuit found that all four statutory&nbsp;fair use&nbsp;factors weighed decisively against&nbsp;ComicMix, resulting in no fair use.&nbsp;With respect to the first factor, the purpose and character of the use, the Court found the mash-up commercial and not transformative.&nbsp;The Court found that the accused mash-up was not a parody because it was not a spoof, caricature, send-up, or comment on another work.&nbsp;Merely adding&nbsp;Star Trek&nbsp;characters&nbsp;on top of meticulous copying of&nbsp;Go!&nbsp;failed to be transformative.&nbsp;The Court noted several&nbsp;figures used in&nbsp;Boldly Go!&nbsp;closely mimicked figures from&nbsp;Go!&nbsp;and other Seuss works.&nbsp;

The remaining factors also weighed against fair use. The nature of&nbsp;Go!&nbsp;was creative and expressive. The amount of work taken by&nbsp;Boldly Go!&nbsp;was substantial,&nbsp;by quantity and quality.&nbsp;&nbsp;

The&nbsp;defendant failed to meet its&nbsp;burden to show lack of harm&nbsp;to the value or market for the copyrighted work. The market for&nbsp;Boldly Go!&nbsp;paralleled the market for&nbsp;Go!&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

The&nbsp;Court also affirmed the&nbsp;dismissal of the trademark infringement claim because&nbsp;the&nbsp;accused use&nbsp;was artistically relevant to the underlying work and was not explicitly misleading.&nbsp;

Ninth Circuit holds mash-up of Dr. Seuss and Star Trek not fair use