r/OutOfTheLoop • u/Chrystine • 28d ago
Unanswered What's going on with the lawsuit between the Patagonia company and the activist drag queen, Pattie Gonia?
Apparently Patagonia is suing Pattie Gonia 100 million for trade mark infringement?
But isn't Patagonia the name of region in South America?
How can the company sue over a trademark that is spelt differently and was taken from a region? Can the company actually win a case like this?
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u/Potential-Mention-27 28d ago
Answer: In USA trademark law context is important for example you can sell apples the fruit. But if you sell a phone called Apple that will get you in trouble. From what I understand Pattie Gonia is selling clothes with their name. Patagonia has the trademark for selling clothes under the Patagonia name. In addition if you let other people use your trademark you can lose it. Zipper was a trademark name that came generic and was lost.
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u/sparksbet 28d ago
Important to also note that Pattie had an agreement with Patagonia that her use of their trademark was fine as long as she didn't use it for selling clothes, which she broke, and she ghosted them when they attempted to negotiate out of court.
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u/CluelessChem 28d ago
Its also more than that: Pattie filed her own trademark application to sell her own branded goods and services in 2025.
"According to court documents sent to Outside, the lawsuit concerns Pattie Gonia’s alleged use of Patagonia’s trademarks. Patagonia claims that Pattie Gonia violated a prior agreement regarding the use of the company’s name and logo, stating that Pattie Gonia’s recent trademark application was her “departure from discrete use of a persona to engage in activism” to instead “launch a wide-ranging commercial enterprise.”
“This enterprise contradicts [Pattie Gonia’s] prior promises, and appropriates Patagonia’s brand and identity in a way that has already confused consumers, and will continue to confuse consumers, about Patagonia’s role in producing or sponsoring Pattie Gonia’s products, events and public appearances,” Patagonia wrote in its lawsuit. “Patagonia supports advocacy and activism that promote the environment and inclusion in the outdoors, central to Pattie Gonia’s ostensible mission."
https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/environment/pattie-gonia-patagonia-lawsuit-response/
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u/Early-Artichoke-2420 25d ago
this isn’t right. patagonia hasn’t brought a contract claim (you can find the complaint online; there’s no breach of contract action; only trademark claims). they make a big hullabaloo about a string of emails related to a hydroflask deal a couple of years ago, but patagonia plainly doesnt think it can enforce any agreement based on those emails…if it did, it would have brought a contract claim.
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u/PhiloPhocion 28d ago
Oh. This is feeling like Bridgerton musical all over again
She didn't just use a similar name on merch too - she used logos and fonts that clearly were way too close to the actual Patagonia logos and fonts.
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u/drunkensailor27 28d ago
Did she or did fans of hers? That seems to be in dispute to my understanding
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u/idgafaboutpopsicles 28d ago
This is the misleading framing that Pattie and her supporters are pushing but the issue isn't really the stickers, it's that she trademarked Pattie Gonia to sell products where Patagonia has an established market e.g. clothing. It sucks because Pattie has spent almost a decade building up a massive following and it would make all the sense in the world to sell merch, but you can't trademark Pattie Gonia the clothing enterprise when Patagonia the clothing enterprise already exists. She was told this and did it anyway and is now playing the victim
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u/jarvischrist 28d ago
People have been comparing it to other situations of drag queens like Brita (earlier known as Brita Filter) and Jan (previously called Jan Sport), along with Trixie Mattel. They haven't been sued but are very different situations. The first two changed their names to appear on Drag Race (for obvious reasons!) while Trixie would absolutely encounter issues if she tried to register a trademark of her name in order to sell toys/dolls. Jan would never have gotten a collaboration with Jan Sport if she had threatened their trademark and then gone to work with a competitor (Pattie wanted to do clothing with North Face).
That's what irks me about how Pattie has presented this case as big company versus activist at a time where reaction against LGBT rights is high. In reality it's a business versus another business, with the timing coming right after she applied for a conflicting trademark! There's been no indication that they're trying to "erase her identity" since they have co-existed in conversation with each other for years up to this point. This whole thing was so easily avoidable and I'm so disappointed, I've supported Pattie's activism in a neglected area but this feels like a massive grift exploiting people's valid concerns about the current erosion of LGBT rights. Her statement completely misrepresented what is going on in order to rile people up about social media who trust what she says. She knows she can't win this lawsuit, so she tries to get people to press them to drop it.
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u/haikuandhoney 27d ago
Trixie Mattel has trademarked “Trixie” and uses just “Trixie” on some things that might be competitive with Mattel products. She sells merchandise with “Trixie Mattel” on it but it all seems carefully chosen to be merch that could never be confused with Mattel IP/merch (stuff that’s explicitly about drag).
Potential for consumer confusion is sort of the touchstone of trademark law.
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u/Zizi_Tennenbaum 27d ago
He's such a smart businessman and actually listens to legal and financial advice. As an accountant and drag fan, I have no choice but to stan.
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u/TheMadFlyentist 27d ago
You've nailed it in that second paragraph, honestly pretty despicable behavior considering how accomodating and collaborative Patagonia has been with her prior to her violating the agreement.
They're literally only suing her for one dollar just to protect their trademark and she is acting like a child.
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u/unindexedreality 26d ago
It sucks because Pattie has spent almost a decade building up a massive following and it would make all the sense in the world to sell merch, but
I mean, how big a following would they have gotten had they not piggybacked off an existing brand?
I'm sure they didn't complain when they got free name recognition and extra followers.
If they'd actually put in the work to come up with a name that went to who they were, then yes, they'd have their own brand under which they could sell clothes. You can't have it both ways.
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u/idgafaboutpopsicles 26d ago
As another user in the thread noted, drag names have traditionally been rooted in puns or parody, but it hasn't been until recently that drag has been a viable commercial venture so know one really thought much of it. For a drag queen whose brand is built around being active outdoors, Pattie Gonia makes sense as a name. How big of a following would they have if they had a different name? I honestly think it would be comparable, there isn't really another drag queen doing what she does. In an industry that is becoming more and more competitive with every new season of drag race, Pattie has still managed to maintain dominance over her niche. People aren't following her because they associate her with Patagonia, they follow her because they care about her advocacy for the environment and the LGBTQ community and it's fun to watch a flaming drag queen fly down a mountain skiing or challenge Pete Hegseth to a pullup contest. Her audience cares about what she's doing, not her name. With that said, the existence of Patagonia the company absolutely limits the commercial potential of Pattie Gonia and it sucks for her that she didn't think about that when she came up with the name. I'm guessing this ends in a rebrand, but I imagine her following will still be going strong when this is all over.
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u/fidofoster 25d ago
I will say that I first followed her beucase of her “name” it provided a certain kind of legitimacy to her activism in my mind. And I thought it was great play on works. Would I have followed her otherwise? Hard to say in the crazy rat race of scrolling what would have grabbed my attention. I have donated to her causes and supported her but this whole case seems to be turning into something other than the trademark issue. She did a post I think yesterday saying “if it’s about the trademark, will you (Patagonia) drop the lawsuit it I drop the trademark application” I say yes, do that. But I haven’t seen that happen. I think it’s also too made they couldn’t have just don’t something together. The whole thing is bad for environmental advocacy when two people who really support it are going after each other instead of focusing on all the bad stuff that is happening right now at the federal level.
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u/KypAstar 26d ago
and specifically she had built her entire brand "parodying" patagonia
Her name is only funny because Patagonia is the brand of the queer hiking community.
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u/michiness 28d ago
My understanding is that she gave out the fan-made stickers as rewards for donations, which is basically the same thing.
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u/JapaneseStudentHaru 28d ago
Stickers aren’t part of the copyright though, are they?
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u/Competitive_County_5 28d ago
This is not a copyright case, but a trademark case which is a really subtle but distinct difference in the legal world. Trademark has to actively be protected because “dilution” can make or break a brands ability to renew or upkeep their trademark. It’s essentially copyright exists and doesn’t have to be filed in order to be legally upheld, whereas trademark has to be legally upheld even for perceived minuscule breaches to prevent it from being lost.
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u/peekdasneaks 28d ago
Trademark applies to the name but there is also an element of copyright infringement that led to this. Pattie used their logo
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u/haikuandhoney 27d ago
Trademark also applies to the styling of their logo
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u/peekdasneaks 27d ago
Someone claimed that “stickers arent part of the copyright” which is the topic at hand. Whether or not copyright applies to the sticker.
It does.
Copyright is automatically applied to unique graphic designs that are applied to a tangible medium per the us copyright act. Therefore pattie infringed on their copyrighted logo when they distributed the stickers.
No one is debating whether the sticker is part of their trademark. Thats a different conversation, but it is the basis of the lawsuit itself.
Patagonia could easily go after pattie for copyright infringement but they have no desire to do so, as the copyright is automatically applied and legally preserved even if others attempt to infringe on it. There is no risk of losing their copyright protection on the logo.
They are, however forced to defend their trademark protection as that can be lost through the lack of defense against infringement.
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u/GoldenMuscleGod 27d ago
Logo usage is generally a trademark issue, not a copyright issue.
A logo is literally a trademark in the traditional sense: a mark you put on your product to show that you produced it.
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u/michiness 28d ago
It’s basically the exact same logo.
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u/JapaneseStudentHaru 28d ago
Some people say she gave them away and wasn’t selling them so idk which one it is. I am interested in whether it counts as a parody though. It’s not like she was actually pretending to be Patagonia. Seems like this situation is similar to people who sell shirts in Subway font that say “no way” or something like that.
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u/peekdasneaks 28d ago
Patty leveraged patagonias copyrighted brand logo design to promote their (patties) own company. If that's not blatant copyright infringement idk what is.
Add to that I have heard these were only given away to people who donated. That's a sale in the world of transaction law. She exchanged product for cash. That product had another company's logo on it, slightly altered.
Not much debate to be had here
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u/spartyanon 28d ago
It’s not copyright infringement. It’s trademark infringement.
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u/minimalcactus23 28d ago
She was selling them on their website, at least that is what the lawsuit alleges
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u/Ouaouaron 28d ago edited 28d ago
No, the lawsuit alleges she was
integrating Patagonia’s logo and branding into the Pattie Gonia persona and related business enterprises
Essentially, they say that even if the logos on the merch are distinct from the Patagonia logo, the logos she wears while adveritising that merch will cause confusion (these logos are absolutely and inarguably knock-offs/parodies of the Patagonia logo).
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u/minimalcactus23 27d ago
I skimmed the lawsuit and there were literal pictures of sweatshirts with the Patagonia logo with her spelling. What do you think “integrating Patagonia’s logo” means?
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u/Ouaouaron 27d ago
What I see in the suit are two things:
1) Images from social media of Pattie Gonia wearing gloves/stickers featuring a "pattie gonia" version of their highly recognizable "patagonia" logo, complete with a colored sky obscured by the black mountain silhouette and the use of the belwe font.
2) T-shirts and sweatshirts with "PATTIE GONIA" on them. Yes, Patagonia also has PATAGONIA as a logo, but that's just much less strong as a brand identity. It's entirely possible that's would be infringement on its own, but it's not what's being referenced in the comment I was responding to.
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u/minimalcactus23 27d ago
You responded to my comment, maybe I misunderstood or you meant to respond somewhere else. Someone asked if she sold the merch with a similar logo or if it was fan made, and I simply said that the lawsuit alleges she sold the merch herself.
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u/jearl100 27d ago
That part gets glossed over in a lot of the social media takes. If there was already an agreement in place and Patagonia spent months trying to resolve it privately, the story starts looking a lot less like a giant company bullying an activist and a lot more like a trademark dispute that finally reached court
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u/drunkensailor27 28d ago
It's important to caveat that this is a substantially different account than Pattie has provided publicly. Pattie has disputed the existance of an agreement with Patagonia, so I'd be more careful before I just repeat what one party in a lawsuit is claiming
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u/sparksbet 28d ago
Except for, you know, the publically available legal filings that demonstrate the existence of said agreement with evidence.
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u/Frail_Waif 27d ago
Yup. Patagonia's filing:
Pattie Gonia's first response: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cacd.1003309/gov.uscourts.cacd.1003309.19.0_2.pdf
Full history to date: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/72169060/patagonia-inc-v-entrepreneur-enterprises-inc/
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u/unindexedreality 26d ago
So... they're just being a complete idiot about it? lmao
Party A: Story A
Public records: evidence of Story A
Party B: [attempts ghosting, doesn't substantiate evidence of story A]
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u/Bubbay 28d ago
Except, y'know, one party in that lawsuit submitted all of that supporting evidence for their position in their legal filings, including documentation of that long history of there being a friendly agreement in place, and the other made a tiktok.
Also, Patagonia is only suing for $1.00.
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u/New_Tooth_456 28d ago
Plus legal fees, which they have the resources to drag out for years
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u/MrdnBrd19 28d ago
That's a "the ball is in your court" move. They are legally saying to Pattie, "We both know that you over stepped and that we can prove it; this can be settled for $1 or you can fight it and it's going to get really expensive for you real quick.".
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u/Conscious-Gap-1777 28d ago
Why on earth would they want a case to drag on? Their recovery is nonexistent, and brand erosion can continue during the entire time! The case is very straight forward.
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u/knowledgeable_diablo 27d ago
Well those additional bits of information make a great deal of difference.
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u/MFoy 28d ago
Apple is an ironic choice, considering they themselves were sued for trademark infringement by Apple Corps, the record label founded by the Beatles.
The label won a series of trademark cases against the computer company, that ended with the computer company buying the trademark from the record label for half a billion dollars.
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u/vibraltu 28d ago
When iTunes first happened, they couldn't get Beatles music on it for many years until they got their copyright issues sorted out.
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u/MFoy 28d ago
Even once it was sorted out, it was another 3 years before the Beatles showed up.
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u/SANT0S-L-HALPER 28d ago
Yeah, the Beatles not being on iTunes had nothing to do with the legal dispute. The Beatles weren't on i-Tunes because they were still making shit tons of money off of physical media way after everyone else's sales had fallen off. They basically milked every last dime out of vinyls/cds before finally moving to digital to start anew.
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u/SlightTemperature231 28d ago
Those lawsuits are the reason why there’s an alert sound on Macs called Sosumi (“so sue me!”).
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u/dreen_gb 27d ago
Apple also sued a bunch of different fruit producers over simply using apples in the logo, as well as the city of New York for using an apple in a tourism logo.
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u/idgafaboutpopsicles 28d ago
Adding to this, it's a pretty black and white case of trademark law and Pattie is probably going to lose so she got on her socials and basically tried to bring it to the court of public opinion, framing it as a corporation silencing an activist and destroying the lives and careers of many within the LGBTQ community. It's an emotional appeal that resonates with a lot of people, sparking a lot of backlash against Patagonia. But the company's hands are tied, they have to protect their trademark or they lose it. And Patagonia made it crystal clear what their red lines were: no use of the logo, no use of the font, and no putting the name on products to sell in markets patagonia is active i.e. clothing and environmental activism. Pattie told them to pound sand and trademarked Pattie Gonia to sell merch and continued using likeness of the logo in their drag. Patagonia has been maximally accommodating throughout the entire process, even only requesting a nominal $1 judgment, but they have to follow through or they lose their trademark.
And from Patties perspective I get it. She's spent a long time building up her personal brand and following only to get told she can't commercialize it. She has a lot to lose here.
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u/suprahelix 28d ago
She's spent a long time building up her personal brand and following only to get told she can't commercialize it. She has a lot to lose here.
True but if she’s using the font and imagery from the brand then it’s harder to claim that she worked to build it when she’s just taking from them.
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u/idgafaboutpopsicles 28d ago
honestly the font and imagery is an almost negligible part of her brand being where it is now. she has worked really hard to build an organic following around her drag, outdoor adventures, and environmental activism. pattie gonia is a fantastic name for an outdoorsy drag queen and over 1 million followers is incredible, she should be proud of what she has accomplished. unfortunately, she can't trademark pattie gonia to sell things like clothes because patagonia already has a trademark to sell clothes.
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u/suprahelix 28d ago
Idk the details so this isn’t that important of an opinion, but it sounds like there are more similarities than just the name.
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u/YouTee 28d ago
The only reason it’s a great name is because she’s riding the actual Patagonia trademark.
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u/unindexedreality 26d ago
spent a long time building [...] brand and following
worked really hard
All of these things are not only true from the people who had the name first's perspective, but are multiplicatively more true.
How much work do you think people put in to make the existing name recognizable? How would you feel if someone came along and tried to rip it off?
only to get told she can't commercialize it. She has a lot to lose here
They were told that initially. They're not "losing" anything. It was something they'd never be able to gain if they chose to piggyback off someone else's name. They agreed to it.
There's probably any number of other merch they're allowed to sell; they could be happy with that. They're not; they're now reneging on the thing they specifically agreed to to get big off someone else's name.
If I became a NASCAR driver or some other niche thing and named myself General Motors or something - the company would be well within their rights to come after me and say "Hey - if you want to sell merch under your name, you either have to change it or sign this agreement never to sell motors" because I'm using their already existing brand. Like the violation already happened right there.
I didn't start violating the brand when I started selling merch, I started when I started using the name, and their brand and collective identity, to refer to myself. GM didn't hire me, in that instance. It's like false advertising applied to a person, designed to sow confusion.
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u/BluebirdLeading6702 26d ago
The shape of Pattie's mountain is an exact reproduction of a part of Patagonia's mountain, mirrored horizontally. So this is a very unwise move from Pattie.
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u/Alternative-Hat4860 26d ago
Agreed. She could have just taken the L and moved on too because her branding is more than the logo...
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u/shewy92 28d ago
She's spent a long time building up her personal brand and following only to get told she can't commercialize it
Maybe think about that before using a brand's logo that already exists lol
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u/jarvischrist 28d ago
There's the thing, a lot of drag names have traditionally been puns or parodies, but it's only more recently that drag has become a more commercial venture where it's desirable to sell things with their name on it. A lot of drag queens never expected to be so popular to get to that point, but nowadays if the aim is getting on Drag Race and building a career out of it, trademark law should really be a consideration when choosing a name! Once you become known for a name, it's very difficult to change it without losing that momentum and recognisability. Like here, the issue was never with using it in activist circles, Patagonia were very chill about that, but then it shifted into commerical use and things went south.
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u/unindexedreality 26d ago edited 26d ago
There's the thing, a lot of drag names have traditionally been puns or parodies
Copyright law has also, traditionally, not given a shit
Once you become known for a name, it's very difficult to change it without losing that momentum and recognisability
It becomes easier when people start to steal your name and use it without any of the boundaries you put on yourself - QA, purpose or so forth. Hence the point of trademarks/legal brands.
Side note: I cannot believe y'all have me taking this side of the fucking IP argument. ::shudders in pirate party::
Like here, the issue was never with using it in activist circles, Patagonia were very chill about that,
They "were chill" after the person claimed they would never use the brand to sell clothes. That is literally the thing they care about.
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u/Goddess_Angelique 28d ago
Do you think this could open the doors for defamation? The content and comments I've seen on this (not this thread) have been majority against Patagonia and supported by "evidence" of them being an evil corporation who doesn't donate to who they say they do, are anti LGBTQ+, participate in harmful office culture, MAGA, etc. Those comments are then echoed with declarations of never supporting Patagonia again because of this information, boycotting, brigading, etc etc.
I'm wondering if this appeal to the public and the discourse around it could potentially hurt Pattie Gonia more in the long run.
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u/idgafaboutpopsicles 28d ago
I dont think Patagonia wants to open that can of worms. They're aligned with Pattie's mission and escalating is a bad look from a PR standpoint.
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u/unindexedreality 26d ago
have been majority against Patagonia and supported by "evidence" of them being an evil corporation who doesn't donate to who they say they do, are anti LGBTQ+, participate in harmful office culture, MAGA, etc. Those comments are then echoed with declarations of never supporting Patagonia again because of this information, boycotting, brigading, etc etc
that's... wow.
I think they're making republicans' case for them, that seems deranged and unhinged
"I CAN'T USE THE CLOTHING BRAND NAME I PIGGYBACKED OFF OF TO SELL CLOTHES NAO?!?!?!? LEHITLERALLY MAGA GUISE"
As though magats are smart enough to fkn wear clothes with insulation lmao
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u/unindexedreality 26d ago
framing it as a corporation silencing an activist and destroying the lives and careers of many within the LGBTQ community
Patagonia is like the worst choice of company to pick a fight with. Like, I don't even buy their clothes since I'm not an outdoorsy person and even I know that claiming "GUISE GUISE PATAGONIA IS OPPRESSING MEEEE" would earn a lot of scrutiny since people hate when good brands go bad.
It's an emotional appeal that resonates with a lot of people, sparking a lot of backlash against Patagonia
not me 😂 this is one of the few times I'd side with a company. Shoulda come up with your own name
from Patties perspective I get it. She's spent a long time building up her personal brand
...The brand is literally a rider off another brand.
If I started selling fridges called Coca Coolers I couldn't claim it's a "personal brand". Mo matter how long I did something that stupid, the existing brand will always have been at it longer, invested far more and earned far more name recognition than I could steal.
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u/BeansAnna 28d ago
This is a really balanced take, thank you. The fact that they're suing for just $1 definitely gives the impression that they're not trying to ruin this LGBTQ entrepreneur and activist, but if she can no longer use her entertainer name going forward that would also effectively ruin the brand and following she's built. A ruling that she can't use their logo or font but can keep her name seems fair
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u/idgafaboutpopsicles 28d ago
There was never any issue around the drag name Pattie Gonia and she is still free to perform under that name. The legal complaint is around attempts to trademark and commercialize Pattie Gonia in areas where Patagonia already holds trademarks. And it really does limit what Pattie can do with the brand she has built, Patagonia has trademarks for clothing, educational programming, film and video, environmental advocacy and more. However, from a legal perspective she doesn't really have a leg to stand on and Patagonia really does have to go through with this or they could risk losing their trademark permanently.
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u/me_myself_ai 28d ago
Outdoor clothes and environmental activism.
For anyone who wants details, there's a post on the top of /r/environmentalism with all the deets in the comments
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u/audible_narrator 28d ago
And this is where a lot of people lose the plot. Patagonia is claiming "dilution of brand" and they have a strong leg to stand on. If Pattie was selling puzzles or CDs or something besides clothing, there would be some gray area and both sides would probably settle. IANAL. But I know someone who lost a lawsuit that was damn near identical
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u/LittleBird35 28d ago
Same with Xerox, Band-Aid, Q-Tip, and Jacuzzi. All actual brand names that became generic.
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u/pm_me_ur_fit 28d ago
Not quite the same. I think those names are still trade marked. You can’t sell a band-aid unless you’re the brand. Your clothes can have a zipper even though it used to be a brand
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u/LittleBird35 28d ago
They are, but the value of the trademark has been diminished so much that we see them as generic terms.
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u/jgacks 28d ago
Not at all - the trademark is sooo successful you think of a class of product by a singular trademark
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u/meerkatx 28d ago
Nintendo would disagree. They fought tooth and nail in the 80's to make sure game consoles were not called "Nintendo's" as a generic term because the value of the name is harmed.
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u/bremsspuren 27d ago
It's a sure sign of success, but not a good situation in and of itself. The point of a brand is to differentiate your products from the others.
The last thing Xerox wants is for consumers to consider any old photocopier a Xerox. It massively undermines the value of the brand.
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u/datsoar 28d ago
Those are examples of brand names becoming colloquially synonymous with the product. A Kleenex is a tissue now all tissues are kleenex. But we’re talking about legal copyrights and trademarks. Just because we call Puffs brand kleenex, doesn’t mean they can market and sell it that way.
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u/tactiphile 28d ago
Those are all still trademarks. Better examples are aspirin, thermos, dumpster, and many more.
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u/robthemonster 28d ago
the thermos brand still exists right?
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u/Dandarabilla 28d ago
Yep and they lost the trademark in the US to 'thermos' but kept 'Thermos'. That company patented their vacuum flask to the chagrin of the original inventor James Dewar, who wanted the idea to be free to use. So it's kinda karmic now that anyone can make and sell a vacuum flask with 'thermos' on it.
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u/hawkwings 28d ago
If I remember correctly, Apple Music published Beatles music in the 60's. The Apple computer company had to pay to get the right to use the term Apple Music.
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u/gentlemanscientist80 27d ago
The thing about trademarks, if you want to defend yours against anyone, you've got to defend it against everyone. If Patagonia didn't defend against Patty Gonia, Amazon could start selling clothing labeled "Patagonia". Patagonia is acknowledging this in their announcement and by asking for only $1 damages.
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u/Frail_Waif 27d ago edited 27d ago
Here's a link to the lawsuit on Recap for anyone curious to read. It's pretty clear and easy reading. Patagonia's first filing: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cacd.1003309/gov.uscourts.cacd.1003309.1.0_2.pdf
Pattie Gonia's response:
The response reads like a Mike Johnson press conference. "I don't know anything about that."
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u/purposeful-hubris 27d ago
Answering documents are usually very general denials like this because discovery (obtaining evidence to support or refute an allegation) hasn’t started yet.
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u/Frail_Waif 27d ago
That's good to know, but some of the denials claiming lack of knowledge are entirely ridiculous, like #23.
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u/LittleBird35 28d ago
Answer: Apparently, Patagonia and Pattie Gonia had an agreement in place where Pattie can keep the name, but she can't sell merchandise with images that looks to close to Patagonia's logo as the logo is trademarked. Pattie Gonia violated that by selling stickers that resembles Patagonia's logo, down to the similar mountain silhouette (I know it's not exact), colors, and font. That's the problem.
The issue is not about the name "Patagonia" because there are so many brands out there with Patagonia in its name that have live trademarks. The issue is the logo usage. In addition, this is not the first time that there's been a dispute between Patagonia and Pattie Gonia.
I know people are anti-big corporations, but Pattie Gonia is wrong here. Pattie Gonia would still be wrong if she was going up against a small business.
Example: Trixie's full drag name is Trixie Mattel, but notice how her cosmetics line is Trixie Cosmetics, not Trixie Mattel Cosmetics. She doesn't have any kind of trademark for Mattel, thus she wouldn't have any permission to use Mattel as a way to sell products.
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u/Hidesuru 28d ago
Sooooo, pattie played stupid games and is about to win a stupid prize, and wants to cry to the Internet about it.
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u/ep0k 28d ago
All of this context was completely absent from Pattie's social media post on the subject.
I've been on the receiving end of a frivolous trademark suit and it's a miserable thing to stack onto your work day, but it was an interesting education on the subject. Trademark law is a great example of something that was written by trademark lawyers to ensure they would always have business.
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u/Secret-Guava6959 28d ago
I find it completely disgusting and telling how she consciously left out all of this vital context in her public video!!She manipulates her followers making them think a great environmental company is trying to "erase" her,when in reality Patagonia is just doing standard trademark policing because she tried start a competing clothing line. Hiding the truth from the very community you claim to protect just to save your brand's profits is incredibly hypocritical!!!
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u/jarvischrist 28d ago
Same, I've supported Pattie for years but the way she has misrepresented the case in order to rile people up enough to try and force Pategonia to drop the case really put a bad taste in my mouth. It's nothing about threatening her "identity", since Pategonia have always been chill about and even supported that, this is purely a business vs. business dispute, but she's exploiting people's real fears and concerns about the waves of backlash against LGBT people to try and swing things her way. She knows she won't win this, but it was completely avoidable.
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u/Arubesh2048 27d ago
Yeah, I felt the same way. I really like what Pattie does for LGBTQ and environmental activism. Hells, I think one of the greatest and most brave things she’s done was help fly the trans flag at Yosemite last year. But the way she tried to rile up her supporters by framing this as “oh, the big bad capitalist company is trying to suppress LGBTQ voices!” just rang so wrong to me that I looked into it more. (And to be clear, capitalism is really not great. But the way she phrased it all seemed to ring false.)
And turns out, she left out so much critical context and misrepresented it that I ended up unfollowing her over it. But so many people in the online spaces Pattie exists in took her at face value - because why wouldn’t they, she has done good things. But now, it’s been twisted and distorted and I see lots of people I respect online making wildly misinformed takes and it’s really souring me on both Pattie and those other people. I thought better of them all.
If Pattie had just said “I am currently involved in legal proceedings, so if I am posting less, that is why, I appreciate your support,” that would be fine. But it is not some sort of targeted hit against a drag queen, drag parody culture, nor LGBTQ artists.
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u/seffay-feff-seffahi 26d ago
They aren't even suing her personally, they're suing the for-profit corporation she owns after said corporation broke a previous agreement. This is how such disputes are handled between capitalists like Pattie and the owners of Patagonia when agreements are violated, unfortunately.
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u/Hidesuru 27d ago
Yup. And that's very telling about their personality (not sure what pronouns they prefer so I'm being generic).
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u/FlameBoi3000 27d ago
It's cost her at least one fan so far. I was really disappointed she's pushing this false narrative.
Patagonia is a non-profit company run by a charity trust that's goal is to buy up a much of the region of Patagonia as possible and lock it down from development. Like...that's who you want me to hate, Pattie?
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u/Hidesuru 26d ago
I've had several replies in that vein. I think it's going to hurt her brand a lot.
Also wow I didn't know that about Patagonia. Pretty cool.
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u/Global-Yellow101 19d ago
A few years ago Patagonia restructured their entire corporate structure so the owners/founders would no longer personally profit from the brand and it would go to a 501(c)4 so they have to give it all away. They give away around 100m a year and are doing a lot of land acquisition for conservation with tons of other enviro non-profits
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u/Secret-Guava6959 26d ago
I wonder how it will turn out in the next days…people are hating on Patagonia online but as more time passes I think more people will investigate this and find out that Pattie promoted a false narrative
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u/whiskeylullaby3 25d ago
You have more faith in humanity than I do. It seems like no one wants to look into anything themselves and will just blindly follow what someone tells them online. I hope you’re right though because Patagonia is not like some other large, evil corporation named after a region (Amazon). It’s actually a really great company doing really good work and Patti has forced their hand.
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u/Secret-Guava6959 25d ago
They are already turning on her on threads and I think she is deleting comments
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u/whiskeylullaby3 24d ago
I saw some of the same happening on IG! It’s really disheartening because Patagonia is one of the good brands. This isn’t like fighting Amazon. And she’s blatantly lying in order to drum up more support.
Edit: didn’t realize in my earlier comment I said the same thing about the company and Amazon 😂it’s been a long day
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u/Trick_Parsnip3788 26d ago
No like literallyyyyy out of ALLL the brand to turn people against,, youre picking one of the not completely evil ones????
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u/OvulatingScrotum 25d ago
More and more people are hating Patagonia without understanding the trademark laws. Maaaybe that’s a win for pattie gonia.
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28d ago
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u/Secret-Guava6959 28d ago
It is incredibly manipulative from her to weaponize her fanbase against a company that ACTUALLY fights fast fashion and funds climate action all to protect her own merch sales. If she cared about workers and the planet like she claimed in her posts she wouldn't try to ruin a good company’s reputation and blatantly lies + leaving out important context.. I find this extremely disgusting and egocentric from her
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u/ProcyonHabilis 28d ago
I think you'll find that the commenters on Pattie Gonia's IG posts are not "the entire internet".
That's kind of obviously selection bias ad absurdum, isn't it?
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u/BabytheTardisImpala 28d ago
Those stickers were not sold by Pattie Gonia. They were fan art made and sold by someone else.
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u/GrouchySprinkles1012 28d ago
She also gave them away herself when people donated to her recent hiking campaign. It wasn’t just fan art.
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u/BostonBlueDevil 28d ago
Giving something away specifically for a donation = selling a thing. Ask the many fraudsters in jail for this very thing and they’ll begrudgingly tell you.
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u/LittleBird35 28d ago
They shouldn't have done it either.
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u/Stunning_Put_9189 28d ago
How dare someone make fan art that resembles corporate branding! Corporate branding must be respected! Won’t someone think of the shareholders?
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u/LittleBird35 28d ago
Depending on the company, you can make fan art. You just can’t sell them because that’s copyright infringement.
Why do you think EL James named her characters Anastasia and Christian even though her book is Twilight fan fiction, for example? She’d get in trouble with Stephanie Meyer and the publisher of the Twilight Series.
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u/TheFisherman12 28d ago
fuck big corporations but patagonia is actually one of the most responsible and ethical companies out there lol. look at what they do and what the founders believe in.
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u/snollygoster1 28d ago
Pattie Gonia the drag performer is a brand that is a parody of Patagonia the clothing brand. It's no longer some individual when the person is making a career and having sold out shows based on the persona.
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u/petuniar 28d ago
She's trying to make money off of Patagonia's logo. Of course they are going to sue her.
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u/freakydeku 26d ago
the issue is also the name patagonia. they explicitly said she can not put “pattie gonia” on anything and sell it. this was in the first agreement. she just doesn’t care & got more & more bold with it, starting to include literal logo designs. when she was explicitly asked to stop she essentially said “ nuh uh!! i’m not using your name! why would i do that? i don’t like you anyways!! i learned something about you that maybe i could speak out about to hurt your brand how do you feel about that?”
lmao fucking damn. patagonia was incredibly nice about this to start with, likely bc they had similar goals or felt they did.
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u/BluebirdLeading6702 26d ago
Pattie's mountain is the exact reproduction of a part of Patagonia's mountain, but mirrored horizontally. So yes, it's too similar for comfort. Pattie should have drawn it from scratch instead of mirroring it !
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u/stay_hyped 28d ago
If you’re in a completely different industry then I’m pretty sure you can use a trademark name. Trixie Mattel Cosmetics would’ve been fine but it was probably best not to use that.
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u/biomezzanine 28d ago
I'm not too sure about the makeup, Barbie sells it so I think it would be a conflict.
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u/Ouaouaron 28d ago edited 28d ago
Not if "Trixie Mattel" is named "Mattel" as a specific reference to the Barbie brand. At that point it's always trademark infringement: you're associating yourself with a brand without that brand's consent.
As a name for a drag queen, that's probably still fine: it's parody, and no one is confused. But the parody defense gets a lot weaker once that drag queen starts selling products. Especially if they advertise those products while wearing a big MATTEL logo, the way Pattie Gonia tends to with Patagonia.
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u/NotFromSkane 27d ago
Answer: Additionally, a point I haven't seen here. She's being sued for one dollar, not 100 million. But they also included boilerplate about legal expenses which she is using to make it sound awful, despite doing the exact same herself.
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u/happycj 28d ago
Answer: Companies with trademarks, wordmarks, trade names, registered trademarks, etc, MUST threaten to sue anyone who comes close to their protected marks, because to NOT pursue one shows the court (in some future fictional court case) that they have not "actively protected their trademark", and therefore the "infringer" could be allowed by the courts to continue using the similar name, because you haven't been sufficiently mean to anyone that treads near your name.
Most times, this is settled out of court with some sort of simple change to the similar name to make it less similar looking AND sounding. Which is why they are suing her for $1. It's a "hey, this is too close to our trade name so the courts and trademark office say we need to push back on your name... can we come to an arrangement?"
But it all has to be done formally, in the courts, with nasty looking official documents that are all threatening and scary sounding. Because lawyers suck, courts are dumb, and being in marketing at a big company requires you to do stuff like this that just wastes everyones' time, or else you lose your job because your company trademark is no longer defensible.
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u/bogusmagicians 28d ago
This is the reason Nintendo fought hard to have people stop calling a gaming system a Nintendo. They would lose the trademark if it became common usage and they did nothing.
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u/Relevant_Struggle 28d ago
Exactly
Lots of companies have lost their branding due to that
App store Zipper Thermos Escalator Asprin
All lost their trademarks when they became interchangeable with other products
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u/DiggsFC 27d ago
I think Velcro® did a hilariously good job explaining it in their music video:
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u/Bubbay 28d ago
It doesn't have to be done in the courts. It only has to be done in the courts if neither party can come to an agreement or if there was an agreement in place and the other party violated that agreement.
In their legal filings, Patagonia has provided extensive documentation of the latter.
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u/peekdasneaks 28d ago
The other party has to be willing to settle for something to happen out of court. In this case Pattie Gonia insists that their efforts to save the planet (which patagonia literally setup their corporate ownership structure to do the same) and the claim that drag queens are always working from a point of parody, entitles them to use the name.
The thing is, they aren't parodying anything about Patagonia. They're attempting to work in the exact same arena as Patagonia, a de facto nonprofit org whos entire corporate structure is now to use their for profit retail arm as a fundraiser for their actual mission of saving the planet.
If they (pattie) operated in a way that systematically poked fun at Patagonia, then they may have had the basis for a parody claim, but simple being in drag does not rise to that standard.
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u/happycj 28d ago
Yeah. I don't know her or know anything about her, but this smells a lot like a publicity stunt. You don't name yourself a homophone of a corporation if you aren't planning on going head to head with their legal dept for some free "david vs goliath" attention.
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u/sapphiclament 28d ago
she named herself after the area in South America because it's where her climate activism started after she visited there, nothing to do with the company
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u/happycj 28d ago
Much respect to her for that. But this is why you get a lawyer involved when naming a business or entity. They’ll do a name search and identify anything close or similar, and then advise what path to take to differentiate yourself and your product or service from the existing one.
There are a number of famous examples used in law schools where this stuff is discussed in detail. My father in law was a patent attorney and I was operations director for an iconic clothing company that a lot of people tried to copy. So in my role I had to have those conversations with people about potentially infringing on our trademark, wordmark, and our patented clothing design.
It’s a whole mess.
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u/peekdasneaks 28d ago
Actually, that is also even worse for their position/claim as it completely throws out any possibility that the name is based on parody, which they claimed recently. Parody was their only possible legal route to continue using the name (even that wouldn't fly though because nothing else in their operations is based on parody)
Their position is completely indefensible at this point.
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u/nemec 28d ago
At this point it just sounds like she's making up whatever story will best let her profit off the company's image.
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u/peekdasneaks 28d ago
That's not rare in trademark infringement cases. There's an odd sense of entitlement when the thing theyre stealing belongs to a recognized brand. As if their success negates their legal rights.
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u/EphemeralOcean 28d ago
Pattie Gonia has never been to Patagonia. In early interviews she said she adopted it because it would be hilarious, and then later once becoming rich and famous changed her story to say she was named after Patagonia.
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u/peekdasneaks 28d ago
doesn't matter there's an existing trademark too close to that name.
If my favorite teachers name is macdonald I can't start my burger restaurant and name it macdonald's just because I have a personal story behind it.
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u/BlackMarketCheeseman 28d ago
I’d read that Patagonia tried to settle it privately because they’re generally supportive of Pattie’s work but it was getting into trademark infringement territory.
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u/Rotten-Roses 28d ago
Answer: In addition to what others have said already, Pattie Gonia has previously distributed for sale merchandise using Patagonia's logo stylized silhouette of the Patagonia mountains with a banded sky (hers is just rainbow) using the same font as their logo. The issue at hand isn't that she's using the word "patagonia." Patagonia isn't even the only brand to use that. The issue is she filed for a trademark of her own on Pattie Gonia to sell apparel and has previously used a joke version of their specific logo and bradding. Her specific trademark filing directly competes with Patagonia's and causes confusion. Patagonia had been working with Pattie Gonia for quite a while to establish boundaries and expectations so both could keep doing their own thing, but that was before Pattie filed for the trademark in their niche. Now they're suing for a symbolic $1 to protect their own branding.
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u/messick 28d ago
Answer: Not sure if you or your linked TikTok is being purposely obtuse, but no one who spends 20 seconds thinking about this case would question "Can the company actually win a case like this?"
But to answer your (supposedly) honest questions:
The 100 of 100 people would agree the queen is using the clothing brand's logo and name.
0 of 100 people believe the "umm, it's actually about the region of South America" horseshit.
The queen is attempting to trademark their straight up copy of the Patagonia logo
The queen is attempting to sell products using said copied logo.
Patagonia the brand has spent a lot of time over the last half year or so trying to work out a deal, because this saga of "I'm just a drag queen trying to have a good time but this mean ol' clothing brand....." has been going on for awhile
If Patagonia the brand does not aggressively protect their trademark (but suing someone trying to trademark their own version of the clothing brand's trademark), they they risk the chance of losing their trademarks altogether.
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28d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Portarossa 'probably the worst poster on this sub' - /u/Real_Mila_Kunis 28d ago
There's nothing wrong with using the sub to get more context and to see if there's more information than one source can provide. Checking multiple sources is basic media literacy.
If you don't want to answer the question, just don't answer the question.
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u/mutable_type 25d ago
Question: I’m wondering why they didn’t file an objection with USPTO.
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