I once presented a marketing case for my students at John Molson School of Business. I was thinking of sharing some of the facts of this marketing case here on our blog.

Often times, we witness companies crossing a line or simply going to far when trying to protect their trademark on the web. While companies should certainly protect their trademarks, the web is proving to be grounds of backlash and social justice when a big company abuses it’s position against the small guy.  Success in court room may lead to failure in the court of public opinion. Trademark and copyright owners should monitor social media when making a litigation assessment. Deborah Kudzman, the owner of beauty products maker “Olivia’s Oasis” was involved in a lengthy trademark dispute with Lassonde Industry, a well known Canadian fruit-juice corporation. Lassonde took legal action against Kudzman, alleging that Kudzman’s company was infringing its trademark for the Oasis juice product line.

The Quebec Superior Court rejected Lassonde’s claim.  To compensate Kudzman and punish Lassonde, Kudzman was awarded $100,000 to cover her legal fees and $25,000 in punitive damages.

However, Lassonde appealed this decision and the Quebec Court of Appeal, while agreeing that there was no trademark infringement, dismissed the $125,000 award. The Court of Appeal declined to hold that Lassonde’s behaviour was abusive, holding that Lassonde had every right to bring its trademark dispute before the court.

La Presse, a Quebec newspaper, ran a story chronicling Kudzman’s woes with Lassonde. Within a few hours, the story had been shared over 900 times on Facebook, and #Oasis began trending in the Twitter, becoming the most used hashtag in Montreal that day, and so thousands of negative comments flooded Lassonde’s Facebook page. Guy Lepage, the star of the show, tout le monde en parle, tweeted his boycott of OASIS juice products in protest, soon everyone followed his lead and Lasslonde had a PR crisis on it’s hands. Soon, their reputation suffered.

Thus, Lassonde’s success in the courtroom was irrelevant and it was public opinion as expressed in the social media that mattered. Whether Lassonde might have handled the litigation differently is an open question, but it is clear that owners, when enforcing trademark rights, need to consider the potential impact of social media.

This is an incredible case study I gave to my students at JMSB. The author is Christopher Ross, the chair of the marketing department. The case can be found here.