The luxury fashion brand is suing Warner Bros. for using a counterfeit Louis Vuitton handbag in a scene of The Hangover Part II. Normally, that might be kind of reasonable—Louis Vuitton counterfeiting is rampant—but in the movie, the prop was used as part of a joke.
The scene is set at an airport: the character Alan (Zach Galifianakis) carries a suitcase bearing the logo “LVM,” an obvious tip-off that the item is a fake (genuine Louis Vuitton bags are marked “LV”). “Careful,” Alan tells his friend, “that is a Louis Vuitton,” mispronouncing the name as “Lewis.” That’s the joke: Alan is a sloppy spazz that brags about owning a luxury designer item even though he a) can’t pronounce the designer’s name and b) obviously bought a fake. The scene is making fun of poseurs, and it uses a poseur bag as a prop for the joke. In the movie, as in life, Alan is comically ridiculous for carrying a counterfeit. Not that I know anything about law and whether this would be an effective strategy, but it doesn’t seem like it would be an insane stretch for even a brain-dead lawyer to make the case that the scene was a subtle defense of intellectual property.
But Louis Vuitton’s massive ego doesn’t, apparently, leave any room for a sense of humor (thinks it’s “special”—check. “Fragile self-esteem”—check.). The fashion heavyweight is demanding that the film be removed from sale and seeking part of the film’s $580+ million profits and triple damages. Talk about “unreasonable goals.”
Image via Vogue.co.uk—a Louis Vuitton handbag at the brand’s Fall 2011 runway show
[via Vogue.co.uk]
