Preliminary injunction issued against Twilight Fanzine
Summit Entertainment, LLC v. Beckett Media, LLC, 2010 U.S.Dist. LEXIS 7833 (
Plaintiff, holder of copyright and trademark rights related to the motion picture Twilight, sued defendant, publisher of a Twilight Fanzine, for infringement. The court granted plaintiff’s motion for a preliminary injunction.
Defendant claimed a license to use copyright photos from plaintiff’s publicity website. However, plaintiff countered that a number of the pictures were not from the publicity website and that defendant had altered some pictures from the website, thereby exceeding the scope of the license granted by plaintiff. The court found plaintiff likely to succeed on these claims. The court also found that plaintiff had a valid trademark covering a wide variety of goods and that defendant was using the trademark. Therefore, plaintiff was likely to suceed on the trademark infringement claims as well.
The court then analyzed the remaining factors for preliminary injunction:
- There is a presumption of irreparable injury in trademark cases- defendant’s intent to cease the infringing activity voluntarily does not make this issue moot.
- The balance of hardships is in favor of plaintiff because plaitniff’s goodwill is at risk of being devalued by continuing sale and distribution of infringing products. Meanwhile, since defendant intends to cease the offending activitiy, the harm to defendant would minimal.
- The public interest ins served by protecting the public from deception and confusion by defendant’s infringing activities.
The court then limited the scope of the injunction so that it would not cover fair use and that the “Twilight Marks” must be clearly defined.
What do you think? Based on the court’s reasoning, is there ever a trademark infringement case where there wouldn’t be irreparable harm, balance of hardships and public interest in the plaintiff’s favor?