Unfortunately, Pattie is lying.
"Pattie named herself after the region in South America." Come the fuck on. https://www.self.com/story/pattie-gonia-backpacking-drag-q
Patagonia is not trying to "take away her name." Patagonia has no problem with her calling herself Pattie Gonia or performing as such, or using it for activism, or whatever. They are suing her to stop her from directly competing with them with a substantially similar trademark in clothing sales.
You can read the complaint here.
The relevant prayer for relief is on page 34-36. It asks the court to stop Pattie from selling, distributing, or advertising, "any goods or services that display any words or symbols that so resemble the PATAGONIA trademarks as to be likely to cause confusion, mistake, or deception;" destroy the merch she was selling that would so cause confusion; and to not do it again in the future. It doesn't ask for damages more than $1 and for attorneys fees (aka pay us back for making us have to file this stupid lawsuit).
It also asks the court to stop Pattie from trying to register her drag name as a trademark specifically to sell branded apparel that says "PATTIEGONIA" - aka the same market, to an overlapping sales base.
2. Yeah this is 100% a "brand conflict." Patagonia had no issues with her existence, her drag name, her activism. (According to facts in the complaint, which she has not denied) it had no issue with even her partnering with competing brands, as long as
When Pattie started selling her own branded merch, Patagonia tried to reach out to her to resolve things informally. They were not able to do so. (And in my opinion, the email from Pattie in response looks really really bad - as I read it, it is essentially a threat to try to use her fanbase and progressive credentials to attack and harm Patagonia's brand if they try to enforce their trademark. And to be clear - if she has issues with Patagonia's actions as a brand, using those as a private threat against the company to advance her commercial interests while continuing to publicly directly associate herself with the brand - examples both in the lawsuit and in this thread: https://bsky.app/profile/kathryntewson.bsky.social/post/3mnbadc2egk2e - is. Well, I don't think it's behavior that looks good for Pattie.)
They filed this lawsuit b/c she filed to trademark the "Pattie Gonia" brand to directly compete with Patagonia in the same market. This is 100% a brand conflict. She's just lying to people.
Two other quick comments:
OP above used scare quotes around "irreparable" harm. This happens every time there is a lawsuit for injunctive relief and the person posting about it wants to make the plaintiff sound unreasonable and absurd. Irreparable harm is just literally the legal standard for injunctive relief.
I think OP's comment that, "In contrast, drag queen Jan Sport has a Jansport bag line. It's that easy to just... work with a queen," is ironically a good demonstration about the potential for brand confusion. Based on this comment, OP is demonstrating that their assumption, should they see "Pattie Gonia" branded clothing, is that it would be a collaboration. But Pattie Gonia wasn't trying to work with Patagonia. She specifically said she did not want to do so. She wants sell her own merch.
On Pattie's website, she says about this lawsuit,
I agree with Pattie on this point. But right now, while there are so many attacks on both the climate and on queer people, especially trans people? To lie about a (legally speaking, entirely reasonable, lawsuit from a brand that was - as far as any actual legal analysis I have seen ) and to use people's fears and concerns in the - as OP says - "current political landscape" - to try to sell you her own merch? (Because that is what the lawsuit is about. She is telling you to harass Patagonia so she can sell you branded merch instead.)
I have a lot of feelings about someone taking the energy - our fears, our need to protect each other, our love - of our community, and redirecting it toward their own commercial benefit. It's really hard for me to see what Pattie is doing in any other light.
