I.P. Lund Trading APS v. Kohler Co.

I.P. Lund Trading APS (Lund) (plaintiff) manufactured the VOLA faucet, which was displayed in museums and featured in national magazines. Kohler Company (defendant) and its affiliate Robern Inc. (defendant) (collectively, Kohler) sought to sell a Falling Water faucet, which would be similar but not identical to Lund’s faucet. Before Kohler released its faucet, Lund sought an injunction prohibiting Kohler from doing so because, among other things, it would dilute Lund’s trade dress in violation of the Federal Trademark Dilution Act of 1995 (FTDA), which protects famous marks from dilution. The district court granted a preliminary injunction, ruling that Lund was likely to succeed on its FTDA claim. First, the district court concluded that Lund’s faucet was famous under traditional trademark-infringement standards because it was strong, had acquired secondary meaning, and was renowned in the interior design and high-end bathroom-fixtures markets. Second, the district court concluded that Kohler’s faucet would lessen demand for Lund’s faucet and thus dilute Lund’s faucet’s identity through blurring. In doing so, the district court applied the so-called Sweet factors set forth by Judge Sweet in a concurrence in a Second Circuit dilution case arising under New York law. Kohler appealed, arguing, among other things, that (1) the district court should have applied a more rigorous standard to determine whether Lund’s design was famous, (2) any lessening of demand for the VOLA faucet is irrelevant to possible blurring and the Sweet factors are inapplicable to FTDA cases, and (3) applying the FTDA to trade dress would be unconstitutional.