I just read that Patagonia filed a federal trademark infringement lawsuit against Pattie Gonia and my brain kind of short-circuited for a second. It’s apparently tied to a prior brand agreement and the fact that she also tried to trademark “Pattie Gonia” for clothing and events, which… yeah, I can see how that name was always going to live somewhere between parody, performance, and brand confusion. What’s weird is how it blurs everything at once, activism, identity, branding, outdoor culture, all of it. Patagonia is one of those companies people already associate with environmental ethics, and Pattie Gonia is literally built around queer performance + outdoor advocacy, so it doesn’t feel like a clean “copy vs original” situation. Does anyone else have any thoughts?
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