FUJIFILM AND POLAROID HEAD TO TRIAL IN NEARLY DECADE-OLD TRADEMARK DISPUTE

“A nearly decade-old dispute over the intellectual property rights of instant film is headed to court. Dating back to 2017, Polaroid and Fujifilm have gone back and forth over the rights to Polaroid’s “classic border logo” and Fujifilm’s Instax film.”

Back in 2017, Polaroid threatened legal action against Fujifilm unless it pulled its Square film from the market, which it alleged was “essentially identical” to its iconic instant film. Even though Polaroid stopped manufacturing film in 2008 and did not resume until the success of the Impossible Project brought it back in 2017. While Polaroid stopped making the film, it did continue to license its trademarks.

The point of contention is the “classic border logo” (CBL), which is described as a “vertically-oriented rectangle surrounding a small inner square, with the square positioned in a way that creates the visual impression of thin, typically white, borders along the top and sides and a thicker, typically white, border along the bottom.”

In an order published today by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in the case Fujifilm North America Corporation versus PLR IP Holdings, LLC (dba Polaroid), Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald noted that Polaroid raised sufficient grounds that an average person could confuse Polaroid’s CBL with Instax film.

“Given the volume and variety of this evidence, which includes customer support emails, Twitter and Instagram posts, and other online inquiries, Polaroid has sufficiently raised a genuine issue of material fact with respect to the existence of actual confusion,” the order reads.

“A reasonable juror could conclude that Fujifilm intended to deceive customers and trade on the goodwill engendered by Polaroid’s classic border logo,” the order reads. “There can be no dispute that, when removed from its packaging, Fujifilm’s Instax Square film is nearly identical to Polaroid’s analog instant film bearing the CBL. As Polaroid notes, Fujifilm’s own employees could not distinguish between Instax Square film and Polaroid film bearing the CBL.”

As part of this lawsuit, Polaroid claimed that Fujifilm’s promotional materials and packaging also infringed on its intellectual property, but the judge disagreed, saying what Fujifilm did constituted fair use. Polaroid had previously stipulated that it would not assert claims against Fujifilm based on these promotional materials, focusing instead on claims of confusion related to the Instax Square film itself when removed from its packaging, so the summary judgment (that is to say, a judgment without a trial) doesn’t come as a particular surprise.

Fujifilm sought a summary judgment across the board, but it didn’t get it. Fujifilm and Polaroid must now head to trial to determine if Fujifilm did in fact infringe on Polaroid’s trademarks and intellectual property, whether there is a likelihood of consumer confusion, whether Fujifilm acted in bad faith when it allegedly copied Polaroid’s CBL to capitalize on its reputation and goodwill, and whether Polaroid abandoned its rights to the CBL when it ceased producing film in 2008.

No trial date has been set at this stage.

Information take from Peta Pixel: https://petapixel.com/2025/08/26/fujifilm-and-polaroid-head-to-trial-in-nearly-decade-old-trademark-dispute/