Trademark Law Briefs

Matsunoki Group v. Timberwork Oregon, Inc. et al. , 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 37760 (N.D. Cal, 2010)

The court granted summary judgment in favor of defendants where plaintiff (the alleged successor to the Haiku Homes trademarks) had mailed a cease & desist to defendants in 2001, but filed suit in 2008.  In California, a 4 year presumption applies to Laches based on the statute of limitaiton for California common law trademarks.  Plaintiff alleged that the cease & desist only referred to common law rights and not to the registered trademarks, however the cease & desist directly referred to federal trademark law.  Additionally, the fact that litigation was not “worth while” until recently, when plaintiff learned defendants were allegedly stealing clients,does not justify the wait. ” The court noted, a trademark holder is not entitled to wait until an infringer grows large enough to ‘constitute a real threat’ before suing for trademark infringement. [citation ommitted]”

Defendant also received summary judgment on plaintiff’s copyright claims because plaintiff could not demonstrate a written assignment of the copyright from an alleged predecessor.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 20th, 2010 at 9:53 am and is filed under Laches. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.