The Anchor Plate : Intellectual Property Lawyers & Attorneys : BrickHouse Law Group : Open-Price Lawyering, Hourly Billing : St. Louis, Missouri

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Not exactly "on the courthouse steps", but close enough -- on the Friday before a scheduled Monday Preliminary Injunction hearing, the North Face and the South Butt settled their often entertaining, sometimes confounding, and always media-driven trademark suit.  Details of the settlement have not been disclosed (which is not surprising), but the Court has entered a permanent injunction against South Butt -- meaning that "Little Jimmy Winkleman" will have to start a new business to pay for college (unless of course the settlement takes care of his tuition bills.) Here is a .PDF copy of the Consent Injunction (courtesy of PACER).

So what to make of this settlement?  The case has always been hard to pin down, because it has been played in the media as a parody case, but the issue has never really been whether someone can tell the difference between a face and a butt.  Many have questioned the North Face's strategy of pursuing litigation--in essence, creating a vastly bigger market for South Butt goods simply from the publicity of the lawsuit.  (I think there are at least two more lengthy blog posts here!) In the end, however, it appears that the North Face got what it wanted -- the end of South Butt.  Hopefully it was worth the attorney's fees and the negative publicity (and whatever it's paying to Little Jimmy, if anything).

As of this writing, the South Butt's website is still up and appears to be still selling product -- apparently in violation of the Consent Injuntion.  This may be a simple delay in follow-through, or it could be that the North Face is permitting South Butt to sell off its remaining inventory as part of the settlement. 

There is one more possibility -- under the terms of the Consent Injunction, South Butt could still sell products under its South Butt marks with "the express written permission" of North Face -- under a license, for example.  Such an arrangement would seem to be quite inconsistent with North Faces' strategy all along, not to mention the quality control issues involved with such a license, but in this case, perhaps it's safer to say "never stop watching."