Union busting is old as unionization itself. From illegal actions like terminating union organizers to sometimes-permissible sometimes-impermissible tactics like captive audience meetings, employers consistently attempt to deter and defeat union drives.
Recently, an older tactic has reemerged: trademark infringement lawsuits. Noteworthy employers like Medieval Times, Starbucks, and Trader Joe’s have all brought lawsuits against their respective unions for trademark infringement in the past few years. While the former two suits were dismissed, Trader Joe’s lawsuit was just revived by the Ninth Circuit, as detailed in a previous post.
Even when trademark infringement claims are dismissed, however, these lawsuits can have negative impacts on union drives. This post offers background on trademark infringement claims in the labor context and examines one such lawsuit that ultimately contributed to the end of an organizing campaign.
Trademark infringement lawsuits, and lawsuits over very similar claims, are hardly new. In fact, both unions and employers have brought these kinds of claims in the past.
Unions started bringing trademark infringement-like suits against employers in the early 1900s. The subject of this litigation was union labels, logos that indicate a product was made with union labor. After successfully lobbying states to pass laws protecting their labels in the early 1900s, described by some as “quasi-trademark protection[s],” unions began to bring lawsuits...
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