Fraud is hard to prove
Wednesday, March 16th, 2011Spin Master, Ltd. v. Zobmondo Entertainment, LLC, 2011 U.S.Dist. LEXIS 25261
This is an exciting sequel to the Would You Rather… 9th Cir. decision I wrote about last year. In that case, the 9th Cir. said the district court erred in granting a cancellation based on descriptiveness. This meant defendant’s other grounds for summary judgment- fraud on the PTO- needed to be considered after all.
This decision illustrates just how difficult it is to prove a subjective intent to mislead the PTO in an application (though, to be fair, this didn’t appear to be a particularly close case based on the facts the district court lays out).
