• by Steve McClellan  @mp_mcclellan, June 30, 2015

From October of last year until April of this year, TD Ameritrade ran a campaign devised by its ad agency Havas Worldwide that featured a man holding a piggy bank over his head with the tag line “Nobody Puts Your Old 401(K) in the corner.” 

Pretty catchy, right? 

According to court papers filed by Havas last Friday, Lions Gate Entertainment thought it was a little too catchy — and a little too evocative of a memorable line from the 1987 film “Dirty Dancing.”

So evocative that in April — the month that the campaign ended — a Lions Gate attorney wrote to Havas demanding a seven-figure license fee or the company would face a lawsuit for trademark infringement. 

Havas, in turn, filed its preemptive suit asking the court to rule that the campaign, the agency and its client did not infringe on the studio’s trademark rights and that Lions Gate is not entitled to any license fee or other monetary award stemming from the campaign. 

For those who might need a memory jog, the line from the movie that is so memorable and sparked Lions Gate’s demand for the big license fee was: “Nobody puts Baby in a corner.” 

“None of the accused ads used the line “Nobody puts Baby in a corner,” Havas and TDA argued in their filing. Furthermore, the ads didn’t use clips, stills, music dialogue or material of any kind from the film. 

The ad shop also noted that Lions Gate doesn’t own a Federal trademark registration for the line, but noted that the studio did file three pending applications for it in September of last year, one month before the start of the campaign. The applications, the complaint contends, "state no intent to use the mark on or in connection with financial services or services of any kind."

The suit added that the ads "created no confusion while they ran," and because the campaign ended in April, "there is no possibility of confusion arising in the future."

Despite the April threat, Lions Gate has not yet filed its own suit and has not yet responded to the complaint by Havas and TDA.