Patagonia v. Pattie Gonia (Part 3)

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:00]I don't think people realize that rooting for Patagonia to drop the lawsuit is actually going to harm small artists and businesses and creators in the long run. As a trademark attorney for small business owners, what I love about trademark law is that it doesn't look at how many followers you have, how popular you are, how famous you are. It looks at whoever was first in use for that trademark. Many of you have probably already heard about that Impossible Burger case. Impossible now owes $3 million to influencer Joel Runyon who owns the trademark for Impossible HQ. $3 million and he was able to do that because he enforced his trademark rights. He was the first to use Impossible HQ back in 2010 when he came up with the business name and Impossible Burger didn't come out until 2016. So, trademark law looked at that. It doesn't look at how popular you are or what big brand you own or how popular someone is. Trademark law is consistent in that it protects whoever is first in use for that brand name connected to that good and service that they provide. Think about it this way, if you are small creator and you come up with a brand name and somebody else who is a lot more popular than you, who has a ton of followers, steals your brand name connected to the same exact good or service that you provide and everybody all of a sudden is going to take their side, you would be so it would be so unfair to you as a small creator. But, thanks to intellectual property rights, thanks to trademark law, you as a small creator would be protected in this scenario. And I do understand that in this case we have a big company Patagonia who is suing for their trademark rights from a small creator and I know automatically you want to take the side of a small business owner.

[00:01:36]But, if there was a small influencer who came up with a brand name Amizon and started selling goods and services just the same way that Amazon does, no matter how much I love this influencer, no matter how much I'm so attached to them and their work, at the end of the day Amazon was the first person to come up with that brand under those goods and services. And again, Patagonia is not saying they own at the word Patagonia. I think that there is this misconception that people think that that's what they're saying. Patagonia is just saying, "Hey, all we're asking you to do is not sell the same exact things that we are selling under that same name as it causes consumer confusion." What is the whole point of trademark law?