Oh Snap

Koch Brothers (Indirectly) Lose in Bizarre Toilet Paper Lawsuit

Now there’s a sentence I never thought I’d write.

Georgia-Pacific, the toilet-paper-making subsidiary of Charles and David Koch, boldly filed a lawsuit two months ago claiming that one of its competitors ripped off the supposedly unique quilted pattern of its Quilted Northern brand. And they trotted out almost enough evidence to make it seem like this issue matters.

No, really — they had 675,000 pages of documents in support of their case, as well as around a dozen different witnesses, according to MediaBistro. The alleged offender, Kimberley-Clark, the makers of Cottonelle, which once hired Zach Braff to play a talking dog in its commercials but that’s beside the point, violated intellectual property laws, Georgia-Pacific claimed.

Needless to say, the judge in his suit deemed toilet paper “functional” (yep) and said that it can’t, therefore, be trademarked. Quilted Northern — and Georgia-Pacific, and Koch Industries — lost out.

We’d be more worried about the Koch Brothers’ state of mind here, but this is rather small potatoes. It also looks like they’re keeping busy buying up 18 different properties in Iowa and donating $130,000 to Iowa politicians.

Huh. I wonder why?

TAGS: koch brothers lawsuit | quilted northern lawsuit | toilet paper lawsuit

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