Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued an opinion in Cardinal Motors, Inc. v. H&H Sports Protection USA Inc., No. 23-7586-CV (2d Cir. Feb. 6, 2025), clarifying the articulation requirement for trade dress infringement claims under the Lanham Act.
Cardinal Motors filed suit against H&H alleging trade dress infringement of a motorcycle helmet design. In its suit, Cardinal claimed that H&H’s “Torc T-1” helmet unlawfully copied Cardinal’s design for “The Bullit” helmet. In the complaint, Cardinal provided two alternative articulations of its asserted trade dress in The Bullit: a “General Trade Dress” and a more precise “Detailed Trade Dress.” H&H moved to dismiss, asserting Cardinal had insufficiently articulated its alleged protectable trade dress. The district court granted the motion, and Cardinal appealed.
The Second Circuit reversed and remanded. First, the Court held the district court erred in assessing Cardinal’s compliance with the “articulation requirement”, which had been established by the Court in the Landscape Forms decision. The Court explained that the articulation requirement requires a plaintiff to articulate the components alleged to make up its protectable trade dress with precision and specificity, but distinctiveness is not part of the articulation requirement analysis. Because Cardinal’s articulation of the General Trade Dress was “sufficiently precise as to the specific combination of components” alleged to comprise The Bullit’s trade dress, the Court concluded the General Trade Dress satisfied the articulation requirement.
The Court further held the district court erred in dismissing the Detailed Trade Dress claim solely based on its analysis of the General Trade Dress claim. The Detailed Trade Dress claim should have been evaluated separately as it included more details and features. Analyzing the Detailed Trade Dress, the Court held it satisfied the articulation requirement as it was “more than precise enough to enable a court or jury to evaluate the elements of Cardinal’s trade dress infringement claim.” Finally, the Court explained that although it had found Cardinal to have sufficiently articulated the features of its trade dress, that does not mean that Cardinal has pleaded a plausible trade dress infringement claim. The Court remanded for the district court to address whether, based on the allegations of the complaint, Cardinal has plausibly pleaded that the trade dress is distinctive, likely to cause confusion, and nonfunctional.
