The North Face Apparel Corporation is suing a small suburban St. Louis-area company called The South Butt.
The lawsuit filed last week in federal court in St. Louis seeks unspecified damages and asks the court to prohibit The South Butt from marketing and selling its parody product line which includes T-shirts, fleece jackets and sweatshirts. article here.

A teenager who started the company is named on the lawsuit. His attorney says the company was started to help pay for college by the owner.
It appears that this is a fair use lawsuit. as in title 17 107 of United states law.

As a good rule to go by, copying is not usually, legally, a fair use. Without an author’s permission, such a use obviously violates the author’s copyright. Non-commercial use is usually fair use, but in this case it is blatantly commercial. Granted, many people these days confuse moral imperative for actual law, and would argue that the 18 year old creator is simply trying to pay for school; This is when unintentional violations often occur.

Here are five ways to determine if this is fair use:
Way 1: Is this work new or simply a copy? Carefully analyze what you have done and put yourself in the other person’s shoes.
Way 2: Are you a competitor with the original?  In this case, it certainly appears that way since North Face and South Butt are selling the same merchandise. The argument could lean towards
impairment of ability to use the market for the original work.
Way 3: Admitting parody and crediting original source, not a sure defense.
The fact that you attribute credit to the originator doesn’t change their right to protection under the law..

Rule 4: The closer to the original the less fair the use.
The logo flipped upside down, the word count the same and a general look and feel of the original is really pushing the limit and is painfully close to the original logo.
Rule 5: The importance to society plays a factor.

The safest and smartest way is to first consult an attorney or get permission from the copyright owner before using copyrighted material. The US Copyright Office cannot give this permission.

Parody aside, while researching this blog I found a number of sponsored links that are neither parody nor “North Face” but are certainly capitalizing on the traffic from “north face” keyword searches.

A google search for North Face brings up the following sponsored links:

Onlineshoes.com
Campmor.com
ems.com
altrec.com
backcountry.com
rei.com
zappos.com
getzs.com
nordstrom.com

This represents diverted traffic from the company’s main site www.thenorthface.com. Metamend has a dedicated Reputation management program to address this type of infringement to get your traffic back and your customers to your site.  The signifcant ROI can offset the costs of protecting your online reputation or the savings could be put in an account for a federal lawsuit like the one The North Face had earlier this year.

Federal regulators hit San Leandro-based North Face with a $1 million lawsuit contending that the outdoor clothing and equipment company made unsubstantiated claims about the beneficial health benefits of its footwear.

The EPA claims that the company misrepresented their footwear would prevent disease-causing bacteria.

North Face adhered to the Federal “Cease and Desist” and revised its packaging and claims.

In the wake of this publicity, a well-crafted social media and monitoring campaign could keep the negative results from gaining traction and preserve the positive image of the company in the wake of sensationalism that seems to follow this type of news. Metamend offers this type of customized solution and our customers have minimized the impact of negative stories like these.