Vodka, Sneakers, & Goats: Dumb Trademark Dispute Ends Up In Court

Trademark

from the it's-baaaaahd dept

How much vodka would you have to drink before you mistakenly and drunkenly believed you were drinking it out of a shoe? That is essentially the question that has been raised by a vodka distillery that sued an online sneaker marketplace for declaratory judgment that no trademark infringement exists between them.

I’m sure you’re confused; I can explain. GOAT is an online resale shop for apparel, with a heavy focus on sneakers. GOAT also has built a reputation for itself as being at the very least overly protective of its trademarks, or as a trademark bully at worst. Trippy Goat, on the other hand, is a vodka distillery out of Maryland. Trippy Goat does not sell shoes, but they do have a merchandise section on their website where a grand total of four pieces of apparel are offered: 3 shirts and one jacket.

Despite this, and despite the companies being in wildly different product markets, GOAT began picking a fight with Trippy Goat over trademarks.

Trippy Goat says the dispute began in October 2023, when GOAT sent it a cease-and-desist letter alleging that its use of goat-themed branding infringed GOAT’s trademark rights. In the letter, GOAT cited “concern[s] that consumers will be confused as to an affiliation or relationship between the [parties’] products and/or companies,” Trippy Goat contends. When the spirits company and merch brand refused to abandon its marks, it claims that GOAT escalated the matter by filing an opposition with the U.S. Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (“TTAB”), seeking to block registration of all four of Trippy Goat’s applications, which cover alcoholic beverages, branded apparel, and related online retail services.

In furtherance of its opposition, GOAT has argued that the overlap in the two companies’ offerings, including apparel, “creates a likelihood of consumer confusion,” even if their core goods differ.

I won’t say that the legal team for GOAT is stupid, but they sure are making some stupid claims. And they’re stupid for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, there is roughly zero chance of customer confusion here. The apparel offering from Trippy Goat is both limited and features branding that encompasses the totality of its name, not merely “goat.” Nobody is mixing these two brands up. And that is in part because, again, vodka and sneakers are not remotely in the same product categories. Then you can add to all of that the simple fact that the term “goat” in the apparel space is all over the place, suggesting limited enforcement by GOAT in the past.

And so Trippy Goat sued GOAT, seeking declaratory judgement that its brand is not infringing. Ironically, part of the distillery’s argument centers around GOAT’s habit for trademark bullying, which had the knock on effect of showing just how widespread the use of “goat” is in the apparel marketplace.

The lawsuit also positions GOAT’s TTAB action in a broader pattern of enforcement. Trippy Goat accuses the resale brand of engaging in an “unjustified trademark bullying” campaign, noting that between 2023 and 2025 alone, it has filed an array of lawsuits and “more than 80 opposition or cancellation proceedings” against other “goat”-formative marks, many for apparel and related goods. This widespread coexistence of goat-related marks, Trippy Goat claims, “undermines GOAT’s assertion of exclusive rights” and demonstrates that the term is both “highly diluted” and used across “widely divergent markets.”

Against that background, Trippy Goat is asking the court to declare that its goat-centric trademarks – spanning everything from spirits to branded hats and t-shirts – “do not infringe” GOAT’s rights, and that it is “entitled to both use and register those marks” going forward. The company is also seeking to cancel several of GOAT’s registrations on the basis of “non-use for specific goods and services” identified in the sneaker platform’s trademark portfolio.

I won’t pretend not to love when stuff like this happens. There can be no better outcome then to have, as a result of a company trademark bullying another, to have the trademarks over which it did the bullying yanked away from them as a result. I obviously don’t know for certain that’s what will happen here, but the case laid out by Trippy Goat is compelling, to say the least.

At the very least, I expect the court to give Trippy Goat the okay to have its trademarks registered. Any other outcome would be, frankly, trippy.

Filed Under: apparel, shoes, trademark, vodka
Companies: goat, trippy goat