Oscar sues over unauthorized (and unsavory) swag bags
Enough with the fake "Oscar" swag bags! So says Oscar.
A marketing company flogging what it calls "Oscar" gift bags — containing such stuff as sex toys, a marijuana vaporizer and a "vampire breast lift" — is being sued by the Academy for tarnishing Oscar's reputation with unsavory swag.
Less than two weeks before the Feb. 28 Oscar ceremony, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences went to court on Tuesday, fed up with unauthorized people and companies grabbing the Oscar trademark for financial gain — especially when the "gifts" in question are "less than wholesome."
The lawsuit charges trademark infringement and dilution, and false advertising. The Academy wants it to stop, and wants damages equal to three times whatever profits are realized from sales of the bags.
The target is a marketer named Lash Fary, doing business as Distinctive Assets, which last week sent out press releases crowing about its 2016 "Everybody Wins at the Oscars" Gift Bag.
"This year's record-breaking gift bag is worth over $200,000!," said the press release issued by Nicole Bryant of 3d Public Relations & Marketing.
But the gifts, which ranged from a trip to Israel worth $55,000 to a box of protein bars for $5.64, did not please the Academy, and confused numerous media organizations into covering the bags as "official" Oscar swag bags.
"Distinctive Assets’ continued use of the Academy’s trademarks not only infringes the Academy’s trademarks, but it is also likely to dilute the distinctiveness of the Academy’s famous trademarks and tarnish their goodwill," the lawsuit declared.
The Academy indignantly cited media articles and social-media posts, by the likes of Vanity Fair, Britain's The Telegraph, and Glamour magazine, that accepted Distinctive Asset's claims at face value and treated the gift bags as official. A Forbes.com article about "absurd swag," the lawsuit says, "unequivocally associates" the Academy with said swag.
The result was stories and tweets making fun of the Academy.
"Press about the 2016 gift bags has focused on both the less-than-wholesome nature of some of the products contained in the bags, which purportedly include a $250 marijuana vaporizer, a $1,900 “vampire breast lift,” skin treatments by Park Avenue plastic surgeons valued at more than $5,500, a $250 sex toy, and $275 Swiss-made toilet paper, and the unseemliness of giving such high value gifts, including trips costing tens of thousands of dollars, to an elite group of celebrities."
Distinctive Assets, which markets third-party products for inclusion in celebrity gift bags, said in a statement it has not yet fully reviewed the lawsuit with its lawyers and "therefore has no comment at this time," Bryant said in an email.
Last week, however, Fary, the self-described "Sultan of Swag," was eager to dish with reporters about his gift bags, which are intended for Oscar nominees who do not win.
"To be part of the film industry's biggest night on any level is thrilling," Fary said in a press release.
The lawsuit describes how the Academy tried head off confusion (and litigation) by sending Distinctive Assets a letter demanding Fary make it clear in advertising and press releases that the gift bags are not official Oscar products.
The company did not respond, and "continued to blatantly infringe," the lawsuit says. "The week after receiving the Academy’s letter, Distinctive Assets posted on Facebook about its gift bags using the hashtag “#OscarGiftBag” — a phrase that deliberately and falsely associates Distinctive Assets’ gift bag with the Oscars."
