## Facts

- Eveready Battery Company marketed Energizer batteries through a widely recognized “Energizer Bunny” television campaign featuring a pink mechanical bunny in a commercial-within-a-commercial format.
- The ads typically showed a mock commercial for an unrelated product interrupted by the bunny entering from off-screen, beating a drum, marching through the frame, and ending with a “keeps going and going” style tagline.
- Eveready registered the Energizer Bunny as a trademark in 1989.
- Coors produced a Coors Light television commercial using a similar commercial-within-a-commercial structure with actor Leslie Nielsen dressed in rabbit-like attire, carrying a bass drum branded with the Coors Light logo, and performing comparable movements.
- The Coors commercial ended with a beer-related voiceover using “keeps growing and growing” phrasing.
- Eveready sued alleging Lanham Act claims (trademark infringement/false designation of origin) and Illinois dilution, and sought a preliminary injunction to stop broadcasts of the Coors commercial during litigation.

## Issues

1. Whether Eveready showed a likelihood of success on Lanham Act claims by demonstrating a likelihood of consumer confusion as to source, sponsorship, or affiliation from Coors’s parodic commercial.
2. Whether Eveready showed a likelihood of success under the Illinois Anti-Dilution Act based on blurring or tarnishment of the Energizer Bunny mark.
3. Whether Eveready satisfied the requirements for preliminary injunctive relief, including irreparable harm and a favorable balance of equities/public interest.

## Decision

- The court denied Eveready’s motion for a preliminary injunction.
- The court found Eveready did not show a sufficient likelihood of success on the Lanham Act claims because the Coors commercial conveyed a humorous parody rather than a source-identifying use likely to confuse viewers.
- The court found Eveready did not show likely success on Illinois dilution because the parody did not materially blur the mark’s distinctiveness or tarnish its reputation.
- The court concluded Eveready failed to demonstrate irreparable harm or concrete economic injury warranting extraordinary interim relief, and that enjoining the commercial would improperly restrict an expressive parody.

## Legal Principles

- A preliminary injunction requires, at minimum, a strong showing of likelihood of success on the merits and irreparable harm; speculative harm is insufficient.
- Lanham Act infringement/false designation turns on likelihood of consumer confusion as to source, sponsorship, or affiliation; parody context and overall impression may reduce confusion.
- Minimal or nonexistent evidence of actual confusion weighs against finding a likelihood of confusion at the preliminary-injunction stage.
- Under Illinois anti-dilution law, dilution by blurring or tarnishment requires a showing that the challenged use is likely to erode distinctiveness or harm reputation; light-hearted parody and product-category separation can undercut such claims.

## Conclusion

The court refused to enjoin Coors’s commercial because Eveready did not make the required preliminary showing that the advertisement would likely confuse consumers or dilute the Energizer Bunny mark, and it did not establish irreparable harm sufficient to justify interim relief.


Eveready Battery Co. v. Adolph Coors Co., 765 F. Supp. 440 (N.D. Ill. 1991)