“Life is Rad” Legal Strategy All Wet

An entity selling radiology-themed apparel using the mark “Life is Rad” (groan) attempted some radical moves in a suit against a surfing-themed competitor using the mark “Life’s Rad” and the Internet t-shirt behemoth CafePress recently, only to emerge from the waters of the Northern District of California with an ice-cream headache.

“Life’s Rad” (surfing) and “Life is Rad” (radiology) both sold merchandise on CafePress. Life’s Rad filed a takedown notice with CafePress, asserting a violation of Life’s Rad’s federal trademark, which CafePress honored. Life is Rad then filed a lawsuit against both Life’s Rad and CafePress.

Unfortuntely, Life is Rad’s owner, apparently representing himself pro se, asserted a number of sunstroke-induced legal arguments against CafePress, including interference with prospective economic advantage (sorry, dude, CafePress is just one place to sell shirts on the ‘Net, and they had a legit reason to deep-six the Life is Rad goods) and violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s takedown provisions (bro, the DMCA only applies to copyright, not trademark, bro!)

Life is Rad’s suit against Life’s Rad proceeds, but all the claims against CafePress were dismissed without leave to amend.

As Eric Goldman writes on his Technology and Marketing Law Blog, “This is a great win for CafePress, especially because the court implicitly upholds CafePress’ user agreement. Further, this ruling is yet another data point showing that vendors have a lot of discretion to take down their users’ offerings without fear of liability to the user.”