Celebrities
Paris Hilton Allowed to Sue Hallmark Over ‘That’s Hot’ Phrase
Posted Sep 1, 2009 6:23 AM CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss
A federal appeals court has ruled Paris Hilton may sue Hallmark for using her photograph and her trademarked catchphrase, “That’s hot.”
The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the card was not sufficiently transformative to merit protection from Hilton’s right of publicity claim, Reuters reports. The opinion (PDF) said the issue was one for the trier of fact.
The card showed Hilton’s face superimposed on a cartoon of a waitress serving food, and warning a customer that the dish is hot. The inside of the card reads, "Have a smokin' hot birthday." Hilton claims the card was a copy of an episode in The Simple Life in which she worked as a roller-skating waitress.
Says the Wall Street Journal Law Blog: “We have no idea how much Hallmark made on this, uh, incredibly clever card, but it’ll now have to defend itself at trial."
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Comments
Alice
Sep 2, 2009 8:38 AM CST
How does Paris Hilton trademark the phrase “That’s hot!” Does this mean that mother’s warning their babies to avoid touching a stove cannot use the phrase? Do they have to put a verbal TM symbol into their warnings? This reminds me of when Warner Bros. tried to stop the Marx Brothers from using the word “brothers” in their name. Grouch responded something like this: “We were brothers way before the Warner Bros. were”
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Alice
Sep 2, 2009 8:43 AM CST
I was wrong in my comment about the trademark issue between the Marx Brothers and Warner Brothers. See this story of what really happened, when Warner Brothers tried to stop Marx Brothers from using the word “Casablanca” in a Marx Brothers movie title: http://www.chillingeffects.org/resource.cgi?ResourceID=31
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