Board of Supervisors for Louisiana State University Agricultural & Mechanical College v. Smack Apparel Co.

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• holding that the fourth digit of confusion weighs in favor of likelihood of confusion “because the Universities’ licensed products are often sold wholesale to the same retailers who purchase Smack’s products”
• finding that a manufacturer of t-shirts associated with a University improperly suggested affiliation with the University by using the same color schemes, logos and designs as the plaintiffs, and marketing the t-shirts in a similar manner as the plaintiffs
• holding only that all third-party use of a mark \may be relevant\
• noting that “[although the [defendant’s] shirt [did] not use the initials “LSU” anywhere, its identification of [Louisiana State University] as the national champion [was] unmistakable from the [purple and gold] colors and from the references to the games in which LSU played.”
• affirming grant of summary judgment where plaintiff failed to raise a genuine issue of fact on secondary meaning
• infringing t-shirts sold to take advantage of universities’ marks that had been licensed to be sold in the same manner for decades

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).