Coke Zero Lawyers Don’t Really Want an Infringement Judgment
Coca-Cola lawyers are seeking a declaratory judgment that Coke Zero is not infringing the copyright of a water company that markets Naturally Zero Canadian Natural Spring Water.
The Fulton County Daily Report sees irony in the lawsuit. It notes that Coke Zero’s ad campaign highlights the possibility of suing the soft drink company for taste infringement. The declaratory suit, filed in Atlanta federal court, says Naturally Zero has threatened litigation, most recently in a June 5 letter that said the company was “dead serious about filing suit.”
Visitors to Coke Zero’s website can click on a “Sue-A-Friend” letter and generate a cease-and-desist letter to be used against friends who steal their personal taste.
The “Sue-A-Friend” gag is part of the ad campaign in which Coke’s unsuspecting in-house lawyers were filmed being asked about the possibility of Coke suing Coke Zero for taste infringement.
A story last year in the Fulton County Daily Report revealed that important material was left out of ads that aired, including the fact that one lawyer prefaced his remarks about a possible preliminary injunction with this: “Now we really wouldn’t want to do this, but just for fun here in our own four walls, here’s what we could do.”
When a reporter asked Coke spokesman Ray Crockett about the irony of the lawsuit, he replied, “Yeah, well, you’ve seen the commercials. They are obviously intended to be humorous.”
