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Coachella settles trademark lawsuit against Coachillin companies

By Chris Cooke | Published on Tuesday 4 April 2023

The Coachella Festival has settled much of its legal battle with various companies that were using the brand name Coachillin.

That legal battle was one of many being pursued by AEG’s Goldenvoice – as promoter of the Coachella Festival – against other companies and events that use names similar to its trademark protected brands Coachella and Chella.

A guy called Jeremy M Joseph actually registered the Coachillin mark with the US trademark registry back in 2014 in order to sell branded clothing. But those trademarks were then acquired by a company called Coachillin Holdings which has various subsidiaries and businesses, including a venture called the Coachillin Industrial Business Park.

Based in California’s Coachella Valley, that business park aims to be, according to the official blurb, “a centre of excellence and innovation, setting a new standard of sustainability for California’s budding cannabis industry”.

Which is all well and good, but – Goldenvoice argued in a lawsuit filed last year – the term Coachillin is very much associated with its festival, where people famously ‘chill’.

And when they do that chilling, those festival-goers often take to social media to declare that they are “Coachillin”. Which means that Coachillin Holdings and its various subsidiaries were infringing the Coachella trademark.

“The public has come to associate the phrase ‘Coachillin’ to refer to the Coachella Festival”, Goldenvoice’s lawsuit declared, “not merely to refer to the Coachella Valley – and certainly not Coachillin Holdings or its Coachillin Business Park”.

A settlement has now been reached in that litigation which, seemingly, will see Coachillin Holdings stop using the Coachillin brand, or any other brand that is closely linked to the Coachella name.

In a filing with the court, parties on both sides of the dispute said they had “reached a settlement in this action. Plaintiffs and the settling defendants are concurrently filing with this notice a stipulation for entry of a permanent injunction and final judgment”.

That said, various companies with Coachillin in their name were sued by Goldenvoice, and one of them – Coachillin Brands LLC – is not actually part of the settlement deal for some reason.

That company was described in the original lawsuit as an entity that was “formed to hold intellectual property rights in the Coachillin marks or to produce and/or sell merchandise in connection with those marks”.

“Defendant Coachillin Brands LLC is not part of this settlement”, the new court filing added, “and remains in default, and plaintiffs have filed a motion for default judgment against Coachillin Brands LLC”.