## Facts

- L.L. Bean, Inc., a Maine retailer, owned the “L.L. Bean” trademark and a well-known mail-order catalog trade dress.
- Drake Publishers, Inc. published *High Society*, a monthly magazine containing adult-oriented content.
- In October 1984, *High Society* printed a two-page parody titled “L.L. Beam’s Back-To-School-Sex-Catalog.”
- The parody used a facsimile of L.L. Bean’s mark and imitated the catalog’s format while substituting sexually explicit images and crude humorous descriptions.
- The magazine’s contents page labeled the item as “humor” and “parody.”
- L.L. Bean asserted the parody associated its family-oriented brand image with pornography and harmed goodwill by tarnishing the mark’s reputation.

## Issues

1. Whether Maine’s anti-dilution statute may constitutionally be applied to enjoin a noncommercial, nonconfusing parody using a trademark in editorial magazine content.
2. Whether injunctive relief for dilution/tarnishment may issue without any finding of likelihood of confusion.

## Decision

- The First Circuit reversed the summary judgment entered for L.L. Bean on the state-law dilution claim and vacated the injunction.
- The court held that enjoining the parody under the Maine anti-dilution statute violated the First Amendment where the use was noncommercial, editorial parody and no likelihood of confusion was found.
- The court treated the First Amendment issue as controlling and did not decide the unresolved federal infringement and related “likelihood of confusion” claims on the merits.

## Legal Principles

- State anti-dilution law cannot be applied to suppress noncommercial, expressive parody of a trademark in editorial or artistic works when the restraint is based on the content or viewpoint of the message.
- Trademark and dilution doctrines protect against consumer confusion and certain commercial harms; they do not grant a mark owner a general right to control or sanitize public discourse involving the mark.
- Injunctive relief that prohibits publication and distribution of expressive content based on alleged “tarnishment,” without a confusion finding, risks functioning as an unconstitutional prior restraint.
- Noncommercial uses of marks in parody, commentary, and criticism receive strong First Amendment protection, even if the expression is offensive or disparaging.

## Conclusion

The First Circuit held that Maine’s dilution statute could not be used to enjoin a sexually explicit, noncommercial magazine parody that copied L.L. Bean’s mark and catalog style where confusion was not established, because the injunction operated as content-based suppression of protected expression.


L.L. Bean, Inc. v. Drake Publishers, Inc., 811 F.2d 26 (1st Cir. 1987)