Playboy v. Calvin Designer Label

Citation: Playboy Enterprises, Inc. v. Calvin Designer Label, 44 U.S.P.Q.2d (BNA) 1156 (N.D. Cal. 1997).

Playboy sued the defendant for trademark infringement, claiming that the defendant used its PLAYBOY mark as a metatag on its website. A metatag is strings of words used in coding a website which are "visible" to Internet search engines though not visible to the user when viewing the site. Here, a search of "playboy" on a search engine would show defendant's site in the search results. The court granted plaintiff a preliminary injunction after finding such use created a likelihood of confusion in the marketplace.