File opened. Exhibit A: one canvas shopping bag. On one side, the words “My Other Bag…”. On the other, a cartoon of a brown monogrammed handbag that anyone who has walked through an airport would recognise.

Exhibit B: one of the most famous fashion houses on earth, deeply unamused.

My Other Bag vs Louis Vuitton was a US lawsuit in which Louis Vuitton sued a Los Angeles company over canvas totes parodying its handbags, and lost: the courts ruled in 2016 that the totes were protected parody, not trademark infringement, dilution or copyright infringement.

That is the headline. Underneath sits a short, sharp lesson in the difference between a knock-off and a joke, and in what it costs a luxury brand to forget which is which.

The parties

My Other Bag. Founded in Los Angeles in 2011 by Tara Martin. The origin story is pleasingly unglamorous: Santa Monica banned plastic shopping bags, and Martin saw an opening for reusable totes that people might actually want to carry.

The bags were made in Los Angeles and sold for a few dozen dollars each. Each carried the company’s signature line on one side and, on the other, a simple drawing evoking a famous designer bag. Louis Vuitton was one target. Chanel and Fendi were others.

The joke borrows from an old American bumper sticker: “My other car is a Porsche”, stuck to the back of a battered hatchback. The humour lives in the gap between what you have and what you claim.

Louis Vuitton. The Paris house needs no introduction, which was rather the point. Its monogram is among the most recognised marks in fashion, and the company is known for defending its marks hard.

Louis Vuitton’s own film marking 130 years of the Monogram, the mark a canvas tote turned into a punchline.

In a sector built on scarcity and price, a brand that does not police its marks tends to find them on market stalls. Louis Vuitton’s aggressive enforcement is not vanity. It is part of the business model.

Hold on to that. It explains why the case happened, even if it does not explain why it went on so long.

The claims

Louis Vuitton filed in the Southern District of New York in June 2014. It threw the full toolkit at a tote bag:

• Trademark infringement, on the theory that buyers would think Louis Vuitton made or approved the totes.
• Trademark dilution, under federal and New York law, on the theory that the totes blurred the distinctiveness of its famous marks even if nobody was confused.
• Copyright infringement, because the drawings reproduced its copyrighted patterns.

The core argument was that this was not parody at all. My Other Bag, Louis Vuitton said, was simply using famous marks to sell bags on the back of their appeal.

That argument deserves a fair hearing. Plenty of businesses dress up free-riding as satire, and a judge cannot accept the word “parody” just because a defendant says it.

What is the difference between parody and a knock-off?

It is the question that runs through every case in this file, and the one brand owners and small makers ask most.

A knock-off wants you to think it is the real thing, or at least to borrow its prestige without paying for it. A parody wants you to know immediately that it is not the real thing. The joke only works if you see both at once: the original and the mockery of it.

The test courts apply is roughly this. Does the product call the original to mind clearly enough that you recognise the target, while differing enough that you get the joke and are not confused about who made it?

A cheap canvas tote with a cartoon of an expensive leather bag, captioned with a line from a bumper sticker, is about as clear a signal as commerce allows. Nobody walks out of a shop thinking Louis Vuitton has gone into grocery bags.

The district court: a judge with a sense of humour

On 6 January 2016 Judge Jesse Furman granted My Other Bag summary judgment on every claim. No trial needed.

On dilution, he found the totes were a parody of Louis Vuitton’s marks and fell within the statutory exclusion for parody and commentary. The joke, he reasoned, worked on several levels at once: the humble canvas bag itself, society’s fixation on status symbols, and the carefully cultivated luxury image of the brand being mocked. That is commentary on the brand. Exactly what the exclusion protects.

On infringement, he found no likelihood of confusion. The products were obviously different, sold in different markets, at wildly different prices, and evidence of actual confusion was thin.

On copyright, the drawings were transformative fair use: a new expression with a new message.

The judge also gently suggested that perhaps the luxury house simply could not take a joke. Courts are not usually funny. This one was, and the remark became the case’s unofficial headline.

Why did Louis Vuitton appeal?

Because losing a parody case on summary judgment sets a precedent a luxury brand would rather not live with. If a canvas tote can carry your monogram for laughs, what else can?

The Second Circuit heard the appeal in December 2016 before Judges Gerard Lynch, Guido Calabresi and Reena Raggi. By most accounts it went badly for Louis Vuitton. Judge Lynch told its counsel, in effect, that this was a joke the company was failing to get, and suggested the real aim was to push the small defendant into an expensive trial.

On 22 December 2016 the court affirmed in a brief summary order. Its reasoning tracked the district court closely:

• No infringement, given the obvious differences between the products, the lack of market proximity and the minimal evidence of confusion.
• No dilution, because the totes were parody, with the “My other bag” slogan itself signalling that these were not Louis Vuitton bags. The court called the joke gentle, perhaps even complimentary, but parody nonetheless.
• No copyright infringement, because the use was transformative.

Louis Vuitton asked for more time to petition the US Supreme Court, and did petition. In October 2017 the Supreme Court declined to hear it. End of the main case.

The coda: who pays?

My Other Bag then asked the court to make Louis Vuitton pay its legal fees, close to US$1 million. Here the file turns, and fairness to the luxury house requires reporting it.

On 8 January 2018 Judge Furman refused. US law allows fee shifting only in exceptional cases, and this was not one. Louis Vuitton’s claims had lost, but they were not objectively unreasonable: dilution and infringement turn on detailed multi-factor tests whose outcomes are hard to predict, and a finding of parody does not settle them automatically.

The litigation had been aggressive, the judge found, but not abusive. And he gave weight to something brand owners rarely get credit for in the press: a trademark holder’s duty to police its marks. The Second Circuit affirmed that ruling in March 2019.

Final scorecard. My Other Bag won every substantive point. Louis Vuitton lost every substantive point but was not punished for bringing the case. Both sides spent heavily.

Parody in the wider file

My Other Bag did not come from nowhere, and the law has moved since.

In 2007 Louis Vuitton lost a similar fight in the Fourth Circuit against Haute Diggity Dog, maker of plush dog toys called Chewy Vuiton, with a “CV” monogram and colours echoing the real thing, sold for under US$20. The court found the toys an obvious, irreverent parody.

Interestingly, it reasoned that the very fame of Louis Vuitton’s marks made the joke easier to recognise, and confusion therefore less likely. Being famous, it turns out, makes you easier to mock legally.

But parody is not a magic word. In an earlier dispute over a Hyundai television commercial, the carmaker’s own testimony that it had meant to say nothing about Louis Vuitton undercut any claim to be commenting on the brand. A parody has to be about its target.

Then, in June 2023, the Supreme Court decided Jack Daniel’s v. VIP Products, a case about a squeaky dog toy shaped like a whiskey bottle and named “Bad Spaniels”. The Court ruled unanimously for Jack Daniel’s.

When a parodist uses someone else’s mark as the brand name for its own product, the Court said, it gets no special protection. The ordinary confusion analysis applies, and the dilution exclusion for parody does not cover use as a designation of source. Parody still counts, but as one factor in that analysis rather than a shield.

Would My Other Bag win today?

Lawyers disagree, and nobody can say for certain. What can be said is that the totes carried their own name, “My Other Bag”, as the source. The Louis Vuitton drawing was the joke, not the label.

That distinction is now doing a great deal of work. A tote that put a near-copy of the monogram where its own brand should be would likely face a tougher hearing after Bad Spaniels than My Other Bag did in 2016.

Does the joke travel? Asia’s version of the file

Brands operating across Asia should not assume the American result applies at home. Two cases show how differently the line can fall.

In Japan, a parody watch brand called Frank Miura, a wink at the Swiss maker Franck Muller, had its trademark invalidated by the Japan Patent Office after Franck Muller complained. In April 2016 the IP High Court reinstated it.

The judges found confusion inconceivable. Franck Muller watches mostly cost over a million yen; Frank Miura’s sold for a few thousand, and the parody name was written in Japanese script. The price gap did the same job as My Other Bag’s canvas.

In South Korea, the joke went the other way. A Seoul fried-chicken shop called itself Louis Vuiton Dak, playing on the Korean word for whole chicken, and copied elements of the brand’s look. Louis Vuitton sued in 2017, and a Seoul court ordered the name dropped.

The owner switched to a slightly rearranged version. The court was not amused, and in 2018 fined him 14.5 million won for the 29 days the new name was up. No canvas tote here. Just a restaurant trading on a famous name.

The common thread is not geography. It is whether the borrowing comments on the brand or simply rides on it.

Lessons for luxury and heritage brands

Know a joke when you see one. A parody that clearly signals it is not you rarely costs you a sale. The lawsuit can cost you a headline.

Weigh the Streisand effect. Before the case, My Other Bag was a small Los Angeles label. Afterwards, its name sat next to Louis Vuitton’s in every account of trademark parody in American law. No marketing budget buys that.

Keep the hard line for the real threat. Louis Vuitton’s vigilance against counterfeits is entirely rational. The mistake was treating satire with the weapons meant for piracy. A brand can be ferocious about fakes and relaxed about jokes, and look smarter for both.

Remember who is watching. Luxury depends on a certain grace. A powerful house pursuing a tote-bag start-up through three courts reads, to the public, as the opposite.

Lessons for small brands tempted to parody

Make the joke about the brand. Courts protect commentary. If your product says nothing about the brand it borrows, it is not parody, whatever you call it.

Brand yourself first. My Other Bag’s own name was the label; Louis Vuitton was the punchline. After Bad Spaniels, that order matters more than ever.

Keep the distance obvious. Different materials, price, channel and look all helped. The closer you get to the original, the less funny a court will find you.

Budget for being right. My Other Bag won every argument and still paid its own legal bill.

Closing questions

Who won My Other Bag vs Louis Vuitton?
My Other Bag won. A New York federal court ruled for it in January 2016, the Second Circuit affirmed in December 2016, and the US Supreme Court declined to hear Louis Vuitton’s petition in October 2017.

Why weren’t the My Other Bag totes trademark infringement?
The courts found the totes were an obvious parody unlikely to confuse buyers, since cheap canvas totes with cartoon drawings and their own “My Other Bag” branding could not be mistaken for Louis Vuitton products. The same parody finding defeated the dilution and copyright claims.

Did Louis Vuitton have to pay My Other Bag’s legal fees?
No. In 2018 the district court found Louis Vuitton’s claims, though unsuccessful, were not objectively unreasonable, and the Second Circuit affirmed that decision in 2019.

Guarding a famous mark or tempted to tease one? A clear policy on parody beats a reflex, and building one is a natural part of our brand strategy work.