How DC Comics’ Lawsuit Against a Shoemaker Backfired Spectacularly

You can be aggressively litigious, or you can be careless.

At the beginning of this month, I told you a story about how McDonald’s sued an Irish fast food chain, because they thought their name, Supermac’s, sounded too much like “Big Mac”, and they lost with hilarious results.

This story went viral, becoming the most read article I ever wrote and the first one to hit over 1000 views.

So, as a thank you to all of you for your support, here’s another, equally satisfying story of a large company getting too litigious for their own good.

The year is 2005 and DC Comics just launched a snazzy new logo, which looked like this:

The unveiling of the new logo was done to much PR hoopla, as it was due to appear not just on new DC comics, but also on DC properties in other media, including Christopher Nolan’s critically acclaimed film Batman Begins, the almost $400 million-grossing blockbuster Superman Returns and the TV show Smallville. The logo was also featured heavily on collectibles and merchandise.

Only one problem: they weren’t the only company with the letters DC and a star on their logo.

Meet the Californian company DC Shoes, who make skateboarding sneakers.

Their logo looks like this:

You can often see versions of it on their sneakers.

Whereas DC Comics were also keen to use their iconic imagery on merchandise including apparel. Take for example these Batman Converse shoes :

So, DC Comics sued DC Shoes for trademark breach of their logo. Their argument was that both logos contained the letters DC and a star, and both companies intended to use it on branded fashion apparel.

Turns out that while DC Comics’ lawyers were too busy running around looking for people to sue for trademark infringement, they hadn’t bothered to, you know, actually trademark the damn logo. As a result, the lawsuit was thrown out.

Then, the lawyers of DC Shoes, who had, actually, trademarked *their* logo, sued DC Comics on exactly the same grounds, and won. For several years, DC Comics had to pay DC Shoes a hefty amount of money so that they can keep using their own logo.

In 2012, though, probably sick of the whole situation, DC Comics got a new logo, which they used until 2016.

And here’s what the folks at The Beat -a blog on comics culture- had to say about it when it came out:

To be honest, when we first thought this, we suspected it was a new logo for DC shoes.

Salt in the wound much?

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