A federal judge found a Lansing newspaper is valid in its marketing of the village’s historic clock tower, despite a trademark lawsuit brought against the paper by the Lan-Oak Park District.

In his cheekily worded decision filed March 28, Judge Steven C. Seeger affirmed the Lansing Journal’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, saying it did not misappropriate Lan-Oak Park District’s logo by selling items that depict the town’s clock tower.

“The lawsuit is reminiscent of the old advice about picking a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel,” Seeger said in his decision.

Attorney Andrew Schapiro said the Lansing Journal, an independent paper founded, published and edited by Melanie Jongsma, received “an angry letter” in fall 2023 about the paper’s use of the clock tower image on shirts and mugs it sold.

Schapiro said despite pressure from the Park District, Jongsma refused to remove the merchandise that she designed based on a photo she took of the clock tower.

“She has that characteristic that I think the best journalists do, which is she’s independent minded and isn’t afraid to stand up to the powerful,” Schapiro said.

In the lawsuit, the Park District failed to meet the burden of proof required for the court to affirm the Lansing Journal infringed on its trademark, Seeger’s decision said. Seeger pointed out differences between the logo Lan-Oak registered with the state in 2012 and the image rendered by Jongsma.

“Frankly, Lan-Oak’s logo is so blurry that a comparison is difficult. It feels like you’re looking at a clock tower on a foggy day without your glasses,” Seeger wrote.

The judge added that while both towers are shown from the perspective of someone standing at ground level, looking up, the towers are angled in different directions and show different times.

The images are unlikely to be mistaken for one another, a key aspect of trademark infringement, Seeger wrote.

“Viewing the images as a whole, it is hard to see how consumers could get confused,” he said. “They’re pictures of the same thing, but that’s about it.”

Lan-Oak Park Board members did not respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit’s dismissal.

Schapiro said he found it disappointing and misguided that the Park District would bring the lawsuit at all, considering it was not using the trademark and “there was no skin off their back.”

“I’m puzzled as to why — as I think was the judge — the Park District of Lansing would expend the time, effort and money to hire a law firm to go after the town’s small independent newspaper on what in the end was a completely flimsy case,” Schapiro said.

“I was also pleased that we have a judge here who saw this for what it was and wrote a very fair but also, in his own way, entertaining decision about this situation. Because when you hear about this, you don’t know whether to laugh or to cry, and so sometimes it’s better to laugh,” Schapiro added.

ostevens@ chicagotribune.com