Background
Vericool World, LLC, a cooler manufacturer, sued Igloo Products Corp. alleging false advertising under the Lanham Act. Vericool claimed Igloo wrongfully marketed its Recool cooler as the first biodegradable cooler, despite Vericool having released its own biodegradable cooler earlier. The district court granted summary judgment for Igloo, ruling that the Lanham Act does not protect claims based on the origin of an idea or inventorship. Vericool appealed, arguing that Igloo’s statements caused consumer confusion about which company was the innovator.
The court’s reasoning
The panel held that the Lanham Act, specifically Section eleven hundred twenty-five, subsection a, paragraph one, subsection b, requires a misrepresentation regarding the nature, characteristics, qualities, or geographic origin of a good. The court interpreted ‘characteristic’ to mean an observable aspect of the tangible product, not the ideas or communications the goods embody. Because Vericool’s claim concerned the origin of the idea of a biodegradable cooler rather than a physical characteristic of the product itself, the claim was not cognizable under the statute. The court also found that Vericool waived any argument regarding confusion about biodegradability by raising it for the first time on appeal.
The characteristic must be an observable aspect of the tangible product, rather than the ideas or communications that goods embody or contain.
Vericool World, LLC v. Igloo Products Corp., 24-192 (9th Cir. 2026)
The dissent
The nature, characteristics, or qualities of a thing includes its intangible or non-observable nature, characteristics, or qualities.
Patrick J. Bumatay
What it means going forward
This decision clarifies that the Lanham Act cannot be used to protect claims of inventorship or the origin of an idea, limiting false advertising claims to misrepresentations about the physical attributes of goods.
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