Trademark Injunction Issued Against Print-on-Demand Website–Harley Davidson v. SunFrog
1 01 2018The print-on-demand business is a legally risky one. As I recently blogged, in June a court ruled that Zazzle did not qualify for the DMCA 512 safe harbor. This ruling is even more troubling. Are the days of print-on-demand services numbered, at least any that try to operate without human prescreening of all user uploads?
SunFrog prints user-uploaded designs on T-shirts and other merchandise. Users uploaded Harley-Davidson logos to produce what Harley considered counterfeit T-shirts. The case doesn’t mention if users uploaded any parodic versions of the logos, though the court’s ruling does not distinguish between counterfeits and parodies. (Paging Rebecca Tushnet, who has shown through FOIA requests that our own government can’t make that distinction either). SunFrog claimed it took a number of steps to protect Harley’s marks, but apparently these steps did not satisfy Harley.
Case citation: H.-D. USA, Inc. v. SunFrog LLC, 2017 WL 3261709 (E.D. Wis. July 31, 2017). The complaint.
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