Reverse Confusion Alleged in Ongoing Trademark Dispute
Following up our piece from a few weeks ago about Taylor Swift’s troubles in trying to register the trademark The Life of Showgirl, Ms. Swift has now been sued by Maren Flagg, the owner of a registration for the mark Confessions of a Showgirl, which she has used since 2014 in connection with a newspaper column and a stage show about her experiences in the entertainment industry.
Ms. Flagg, better known by her professional name Maren Wade, filed a complaint in Federal Court in the Central District of California, alleging trademark infringement, as well as unfair competition under both federal law and California law.
The complaint characterizes Taylor Swift’s use of the mark as “textbook reverse confusion.” Reverse confusion in trademark law is the situation where (as described in the complaint) a junior user’s (Swift’s) overwhelming commercial presence drowns out the senior user’s (Flagg’s) mark, to the point where consumers wrongly associate the senior user’s use of the mark with the more famous junior-user-come-lately. As she states in her complaint, what Flagg/Wade “had built over twelve years, [Swift and her co-defendants] threatened to swallow in weeks.”
No doubt Taylor Swift and her team at TAS Rights Management will oppose Ms. Flagg’s suit, so it is likely that this is not the last we will hear of the matter.
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