CHICAGO (CN) — Grumpy Cat Limited is back in court this month with more trademark suits. The company, which owns the image and likeness of the early 2010s internet sensation "Grumpy Cat," in April filed at least four separate lawsuits in federal court, accusing a group of online retailers of violating its trademarks to the eternally scowling cat’s face.
In virtually identical complaints, the company said the retailers ran numerous online shops selling counterfeit Grumpy Cat merchandise — including everything from T-shirts and hats to coffee cups and wall posters. These retailers are primarily based out of China, the company said, though they do business throughout the United States.
Lawsuits like these are nothing new for Grumpy Cat. Since 2019, the company has filed more than 50 trademark lawsuits — and that's just in federal court for the Northern District of Illinois. Many of those have concluded in the company's favor, with the court ordering the offending retailers (often small-time individual operators) to stop sales.
For Grumpy Cat Limited, it's a constant game of whack-a-mole. Whenever the company smacks down bootleggers in court, a new batch inevitably pops up with more supposed Grumpy Cat products.
There’s often not much the U.S. court system can do. Since most of the counterfeiters live abroad and are known only by their online handles, court orders demanding damages or injunction can have little impact.
"If it's an order here, they can't really enforce it in other countries," said Yolanda King, a law professor at the University of Illinois Chicago and director of the school’s Center for Intellectual Property, Information and Privacy.
Grumpy Cat Limited was formed in 2013 to profit off the viral celebrity of Tardar Sauce, a cat born in April 2012 with feline dwarfism and an underbite.
Her conditions gave her the appearance of always being in a bad mood. After owner Tabatha Bundesen’s brother posted her photos online, she became an immediate hit, racking up views and inspiring internet memes.
Tardar Sauce died in May 2019, by which point the internet obsession with her had largely faded. But the frowning feline still had merchandising potential, and Grumpy Cat Limited owned the rights. In October of that year, the company filed its first trademark lawsuits in Chicago.
In its latest batch of cases, Grumpy Cat Limited wouldn’t disclose the identities of the accused retailers and asked the court to also keep them private. The group was working together to conceal their identities, the company warned — and if they learned they were being sued, “the likely result would be the destruction of relevant documentary evidence and the hiding or transferring of assets.”
Like in previous such cases, Grumpy Cat Limited asked the court for an injunction preventing the retailers from selling counterfeit products. It also asked the court to disgorge their profits — or alternatively, for statutory damages.
Why all the trademark lawsuits, especially against shadowy internet retailers that might never respond? It’s impossible to say for sure: Grumpy Cat's attorneys didn't respond to a request for comment for this story.
In the world of American intellectual property law, though, experts say legal aggression can be a virtue of its own — signaling to would-be counterfeiters that behind her perpetual frown, Grumpy Cat has teeth.
"It's a common practice, and it does have some chilling effect," King said. Even if some knock-offs continue, “the IP owner develops a reputation for being litigious, which has a benefit for the company in and of itself."
In lawsuits against U.S.-based violators, Grumpy Cat has won hundreds of thousands of dollars on trademark claims. In a high-profile case in federal court in California in January 2018, a jury awarded the company $710,001 in damages in a copyright feud over coffee bags.
After the trial, which included an appearance from Tardar Sauce, the company's attorney said the verdict made his clients feel vindicated. The attorney didn’t comment on how it made Tardar Sauce feel. Judging from her facial expression, she was still grumpy.
From the perspective of court costs and attorneys fees, the lawsuits against small-time and hard-to-find international retailers might seem to make less sense, especially when those cases go nowhere. But even those cases can help prevent counterfeit goods from reaching domestic customers.
Online retailers based abroad might not care what a federal judge here says, but customs officers sure do, said Lawrence Friedman, an attorney with the Chicago-based firm Barnes Richardson Colburn that specializes in trade law cases.
"Customs works closely with trademark holders, many of whom have good intelligence regarding unauthorized exporters and other means of spotting infringing importers," he said. "Customs can then detain suspect merchandise and require that the importer ... prove that the merchandise is genuine."
"That's still a win, even if you don't get your order enforced," King added in agreement. "You can still stop the offending parts from reaching customers in the U.S."
In a 2021 report, U.S. Customs and Border Protection bragged it processed more than 420,000 parcels from China every day — finding counterfeit items in "more than 13% of targeted shipments."
Even still, the system isn’t foolproof. Customs enforcement gets looser for packages under $800, Friedman said — a category that includes most of the goods sold by small-time Grumpy Cat counterfeiters.
"Customs is under pressure to increase enforcement on those products, which are often ecommerce shipments," he added.
In the meantime, Grumpy Cat Limited has continued its eternal vigil against trademark infringers, bringing lawsuits against anonymous online bootleggers with names like “SecondRegret” (sued December 2020) and “Lichee666 Store” (sued February 2023). Unlike consumer fraud cases, about which federal judges are often hesitant, courts are happy to help settle businesses' intellectual property disputes, King said.
"If it is an entity that has an intellectual property they've developed and registered, the courts are patient with those claims," she said. That's good news for Grumpy Cat Limited in its whack-a-mole struggle against knock-offs.
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