A hot dog by any other name, including a name similar to a well-known sausage company, is not likely to confuse consumers as long as it is clearly labeled on the packaging, a federal appeals court said in dismissing a trademark and false advertising suit brought by a sausage company.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled Monday to toss the suit that sausage company Parks brought against Tyson Foods over Tyson s line of hot dogs named Park s Finest. The determination to toss Park s claim upheld a decision from the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, and hinged in part on Park s argument that customers might be confused by Tyson s product.
Part of Park s claim, Judge Kent A. Jordan said in the 33-page precedential opinion, was that customers purchasing Park s Finest might think they are buying a sausage, when in reality they are buying a frankfurter - an item consumers may see as inferior.
However, Jordan didn t bite.
First of all, because the packaging for Park s Finest displays a factually accurate, unambiguous statement that the product is a frankfurter, [n]o reasonable consumer could be misled by those statements, Jordan said. Second, Parks has undercut its own argument by repeatedly saying both at the District Court and before us on appeal that hot dogs and sausagesare actually not distinctive. If a frankfurter is a kind of sausage, as Parks suggests, then there is nothing false or misleading.
Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott attorney Jeffrey Lewis, who argued for Parks, declined to comment. Tyson s attorney John Dabney of McDermott Will & Emery did not return a call for comment.
This is a developing story.