PEI Licensing, the agency behind the clothes model Unique Penguin, has filed a lawsuit towards the nonfungible token undertaking Pudgy Penguins, alleging trademark infringement, dilution and unfair competitors.
The lawsuit, filed in a Florida federal court docket on Wednesday, centered on claims round Pudgy Penguins’ attire, accusing the corporate of utilizing a “household of penguin emblems which are confusingly related” to its personal.
“This motion outcomes from Defendant’s unauthorized use and tried registration of assorted PENGUIN phrase and design emblems in reference to attire and associated items and providers which are confusingly just like PEI’s federally registered and well-known PENGUIN and penguin design emblems,” PEI mentioned in its criticism.
PEI claimed in its lawsuit that it has used the “PENGUIN phrase mark no less than as early as 1967” and first used a “penguin design” on attire as early as 1956.
PEI Licensing mentioned that it despatched a stop and desist to Pudgy Penguins in October 2023, claiming its “merchandise infringe and dilute PEI’s well-known PENGUIN Marks.”
The letter additionally demanded that Pudgy Penguins abandon functions with the US Patent and Trademark Workplace “to register numerous PENGUIN marks,” in accordance with the lawsuit.
PEI claimed that Pudgy Penguins had “misappropriated helpful property rights of PEI,” which was “prone to trigger confusion or mistake, or to deceive members of the consuming public.”
PEI requested the court docket to order the USPTO to reject Pudgy Penguins’ functions and cease the corporate from allegedly infringing on its trademark.
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It additionally requested that Pudgy Penguins be ordered to destroy any merchandise discovered “prone to be confused” with PEI’s emblems and be awarded all income from the gross sales of such merchandise.
Pudgy Penguins’ authorized chief, Jennifer McGlone, advised Cointelegraph that the corporate “was stunned by the motion, significantly as each events had been engaged in productive discussions to resolve this matter privately.”
McGlone mentioned the corporate had superior functions with the USPTO and was “assured that PEI’s claims lack benefit. The emblems in query are visually distinct and serve fully completely different audiences and markets.”
“We’ve got the utmost confidence that we are going to prevail as Pudgy Penguins has already secured a number of trademark utility approvals from the USPTO masking the Pudgy Penguins model and associated marks,” she mentioned.
In the meantime, the Pudgy Penguins X account posted a meme implying that its model bears no similarities with Unique Penguin.
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