Punchbowl, punchback: district court finds confusion unlikely between invitation and political news sites

Punchbowl, Inc. v. AJ Press LLC, 2:21-cv-03010-SVW-MAR (C.D.Cal. Aug. 22, 2024)

On remand from the 9^th Circuit, the court conductsa multifactor likely confusion analysis and finds that Punchbowl’s digital invitationservices are too distinct for likely confusion with Punchbowl News’s political reporting.Two points stand out: first, the court considers it significant that mostlywomen use Punchbowl and mostly men use Punchbowl News.

Second, there’s a useful discussion of misdirectedcommunications in light of the unrelatedness of the services. There were about 100, which in the context of thousands of queries a year for each party was not significant. Moreover, misdirectedcommunications may be probative of the fact that the names are similar, but notof likely confusion, because relevant confusion has to relate to some kind ofpurchase opportunity. Otherwise, trademark would turn into a right in gross:

Ultimately, the dissimilarity andlack of proximity between the services provided by Plaintiff and Defendant carrythe day. This conclusion is the obvious one. At worst, some consumers mightmistakenly contact one party when they mean to contact the other party. Amisaddressed email, Facebook comment, or X post is a negligible friction thatstems from the fact that both parties have named their services a common word.No reasonable consumer would purchase a subscription to a party planning softwareplatform when they intended to subscribe to a news website (or vice versa)because they thought they came from the same source. No reasonable jury couldfind otherwise.