Courtroom Success: Scott Marrs

COURTROOM SUCCESS: HOLLYWOOD MOVIE STUDIOS WIN TRADEMARK LAWSUIT

IADC member Scott Marrs recently won a major trademark case for Hollywood movie studios in what turned out to be a real dog fight. Rin Tin Tin, the famous German Shepherd puppy plucked from the battlefields of France by a United States soldier during World War I, was the subject of his clients’ recently released children’s movie, Finding Rin Tin Tin. Rin Tin Tin became a Hollywood legend after the Great War, starring in over 26 movies in the 1920s, and was credited with saving the flailing Warner Brothers Studio. A Texas German Shepherd dog breeding company immediately sued the studios for trademark infringement, claiming to own exclusive rights to the trademark “Rin Tin Tin”, and seeking all profits, along with the destruction of all movie discs.

A Houston, Texas federal court recently ruled in favor of the studios, holding that their use of the name Rin Tin Tin in the body and title of the movie was a “fair use” and protected under the First Amendment. Scott D. Marrs, a Houston, Texas intellectual property lawyer with Beirne, Maynard & Parsons and Chair of the IADC Business Litigation Committee, was lead counsel for the movie producers. Trademarks are for the purpose of indicating the “source” of a product. The court reasoned that because the studios’ use of the mark “Rin Tin Tin” in the movie did not suggest that plaintiffs were the source of the movie, and the use of the name merely describes the subject of the movie, such use was “fair” and a protected literary work. The court dismissed the entire case against the movie studios.