Photo Credit: Taylor Swift by Ronald Woan / CC by 2.0
A judge weighs an injunction against Taylor Swift’s Life of a Showgirl branding in light of her trademark’s prior suspension due to actual showgirl Maren Wade’s own trademark.
If you thought former Vegas showgirl Maren Wade (legal name Maren Flagg) was trying to ride Taylor Swift’s coattails over the latter’s Life of a Showgirl branding, think again. When Taylor Swift’s team tried to file their trademark for the megastar’s latest album, it was suspended after they discovered a preexisting trademark for Flagg’s similarly named Confessions of a Showgirl. Even the trademark office thought there could be confusion between the two entities.
That’s an important detail, because it proves that Swift’s team was aware of Flagg’s brand ahead of time, but opted to go ahead with their own “Showgirl” project.
The lawsuit, filed by Flagg and her team, argued that Swift’s massive commercial footprint has caused “reverse confusion” that effectively erodes and absorbs her decade-old, federally registered Confessions of a Showgirl trademark.
Swift’s team clapped back, stating that her album is an expressive work protected by the First Amendment, making an injunction extreme and unnecessary. They also took it a step further, asserting that Flagg rode Swift’s enormous marketing machine for eight full months and reaping all the benefits of potential confusion between the two brands before filing her suit.
But Taylor Swift’s trademark application for Life of a Showgirl (filed by her IP management company, TAS Rights Management), hit a major roadblock at the United States Patent and Trademark Office back in March. Rather than being simply approved, the application was hit with a non-final “Likelihood of Confusion Refusal” and was official suspended.
That means that, while no action has been taken thus far, the judge has concluded hearings on the matter by stating that she “planned to issue a written ruling shortly.” In theory, that could mean a legal injunction against Taylor Swift’s branding, given that Flagg’s own legal trademark precedes it.
It’s the latest interesting twist in what seemed at face value like a potentially frivolous lawsuit.
