Tug on It Once And I’m Dead

Clothing company Patagonia is currently sueing drag queen Pattie Gonia for "irreparable” harm to their brand.

To be clear; Pattie named herself after the region in South America.

So Pattie is asking people to politely ask Patagonia to drop the lawsuit.

I'm extending the invitation to all of you, because sueing a drag queen for 'infringement' in the current political cultural landscape is vile. Especially a drag queen who has raised millions of dollars for non-profits, uses her platform to raise awareness for climate activism, and fully aligns with Patagonia's apparent climate-conscious mission statement.

They're claiming they're sueing for $1. They're actually asking her to stop using her name, and pay over $1 million in legal fees. They're straight up harassing her.

In contrast, drag queen Jan Sport has a Jansport bag line. It's that easy to just... work with a queen.

Anyway. Be respectful(ish), but feel free to be annoying on Patagnoia's socials, asking them to 'DROP THE LAWSUIT'

This is being discussed heavily on Bluesky, such as here.

Meanwhile Pattie Gonia has been called out and criticized about their misappropriation of indigenous peoples work and not giving credit to those in those spaces when she’s used their work as part of her “brand” because let’s be real. In both of Patagonia and Pattie Gonia’s situations this is brand. If we’re going to play purity politics then be genuine about it and hold everyone to their word, because Pattie Gonia is making money on their brand and that’s partly why their releasing this statement and being so public. It’s a PR push.

Patagonia is suing because Pattie has filed for her own trademark of "Pattie Gonia" to sell clothing.

Patagonia does not own the name Patagonia forever and ever amen, but they specifically maintain the exclusive right to sell clothing labeled "Patagonia" so long as they continuously ask the courts to prevent anyone else who asks from using the name "Patagonia" or names similar enough to it to be confusing... TO SELL CLOTHING.

Pattie framing this as "a corporation trying to erase an activist" when Patagonia the company has done more to support the environment than Pattie by orders of magnitude and seemed honestly committed to supporting her work until she, to be clear, filed a conflicting trademark application so that she could make brand deals with North Face and HydroFlask to sell "Pattie Gonia"-branded merch via Patagonia's main direct competitors actually pisses me off. This lawsuit was filed in January but only on the eve of Pride month are we "breaking our silence" to goad fans into pointlessly harassing an outdoor gear company's socials to drop a lawsuit that they clearly wouldn't have filed if they'd had any other option (no really, go read it)? Uh huh. I'm sure. Either Pattie Gonia's team doesn't understand trademark law or this was a cynical self-promotional exercise from the beginning.

Copyright = who has the "right" to make "copies" to sell, for books/music/movies/creative works.

Trademark = who can "trade" under that "mark", i.e. branding, including name and other unique characteristics of the product that you register.

Imagine if Weird Al tried to get a level of legal protection for his parodies that would allow him to sue the original artists for sounding too much like him. That is what Pattie Gonia has asked for by applying for the trademark. If Patagonia doesn't sue and Pattie Gonia gets her trademark, Pattie could potentially sue Patagonia for infringement, which is why they obviously won't let this happen. The two names are too close, they can't both be protected by trademark in the same market space.*