Seattle Trademark Lawyer

Being locked in isn’t anyone’s first choice, but it does offer one nice advantage: a great excuse to plow through Netflix’s catalog of movies.

I recently watched “Sour Grapes,” a 2016 documentary about a counterfeiter of high-end wine. It covered one man’s operation, from sourcing empty bottles to old corks to distressed paper for faking labels. These wines sold for thousands of dollars a bottle — a long ways from the cut-rate shoes, jerseys, and watches that you might see on the street. However, the operation squarely fits within the same definition of counterfeiting: putting someone else’s brand on a good that the trademark owner didn’t make or approve.

Counterfeiting is a multi-billion dollar problem — not only for the impacted trademark owners, but also for consumers. If that wine with the Château Lafleur label didn’t really come from Château Lafleur, then where the heck did it come from? Maybe the wine inside that bottle is a less-expensive wine made by someone else. Maybe it’s poison, like the kind that killed 70 drinkers in Mexico. Who knows? 

That’s the whole point of trademarks. You know what you’re getting. You see a name or logo, and you instantly recognize the reputation of the seller. Château Lafleur? Great wine. Boone’s Farm? Probably less so. But the economic magic that trademarks provide is ruined when consumers don’t know what’s real and what’s fake. Yes, it’s pretty bad when that jersey you bought didn’t actually come from your team. But think about how bad it is when you don’t know what you’re putting in your body.