Trademark Law Briefs

Super-Krete International, Inc. v. Sadleir, 2010 U.S.Dist. LEXIS 50090 (C.D. Cal, 2010)

Plaintiff owns the registered trademark for “Super-Krete,” “Super-Krete Products” and “Super-Crete.”  Defendant, plaintiff’s competitor, registered the domain “supercrete.com” which redirected to defendant’s website.  Plaintiff filed a complaint under the cybersquatting act (ACPA) and sought a preliminary injunction to prevent defendant from carrying out its threat to sell the domain to a third party. (more…)

In Jacobsen v. Katzer, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 115204 (N.D. Cal. 2009).  The court granted summary judgment on a number of issues in favor of the plaintiff, including summary judgment on a cybersquatting claim.  Plaintiff created open source software to run model trains and alleged Defendant infringed plaintiff’s copyrights.  Plaintiff has a trademark for “DecoderPro” related to model trains.  Defendant registered the domain.  The court found defendant did so with the intent to profit.

In McConnell v. Idearc, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 5505  (S.D. Cal. 2009), plaintiff raised copyright infringement claims against Idearc and several Verizon corporations regarding copyright infringement for graphics used in Idearc Yellowpages bearing Verizon’s trademark.  Idearc declared bankruptcy.  The Verizon companies received a motion to dismiss based on lack of personal jurisdiction.  Because the infringement by Idearc did not arise from the contract between the Idearc and Verizon, there was no specific jurisdiction.  Plaintiff also failed to allege sufficient facts to support general jurisdiction over the Verizon companies in California.

CTF Development, Inc. v. Penta Hospitality, LLC, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 79757 (N.D. Cal. 2009)

After being sued by Plaintiff, Defendant started a TTAB action to cancel Plaintiff’s mark based on false statements in Plaintiff’s statement of use.  On Plaintiff’s motion, TTAB stayed its proceedings pending the district court outcome.  Defendant sought to stay the district court proceedings instead.  Because the TTAB proceedings were already stayed, the District Court denied the motion to at least allow discovery which would benefit either proceeding. (more…)