Louis Vuitton sued over a 'Chewy Vuiton' dog toy — the courts called it parody

Haute Diggity Dog, a Nevada maker of inexpensive plush dog toys, built a line around parodying luxury brands. Its Chewy Vuiton chew toy mimicked the shape of a Louis Vuitton handbag and replaced the LV monogram with a CV one. Louis Vuitton sued for trademark infringement and for dilution by blurring and tarnishment — the full armoury available to a famous mark.

The district court granted summary judgment to Haute Diggity Dog, and in 2007 the Fourth Circuit affirmed on every claim. A successful parody, the court explained, 'juxtaposes the irreverent representation with the idealized image' of the famous product — it says at once that it is the original and that it is not. Chewy Vuiton passed: a plush chew is not a handbag, the price points could not be further apart, and the spelling did the joke's work. The stronger the mark, the court reasoned, the more a parody signals the difference rather than confusion.

The dilution claims failed the same way. Because Chewy Vuiton was a successful parody of a particularly strong and distinctive mark, it could not blur the mark's distinctiveness — the parody depended on that distinctiveness being intact. No tarnishment was shown either. Louis Vuitton lost every claim it brought, and Chewy Vuiton became trademark law's textbook example of parody that survives the most famous mark in fashion.