Attorney General Madigan Files Suit Against local affiliate marketer
- Thread starter pocketrockets
- Start date
They aren't fines, they are damages pursued. The suit can seek to claim damages in certain numeration, but it's up to the court of law to decide what they are.
And, for ease of reference: (note the underlined portion)
Remedies for trademark infringement include injunctions, monetary relief (including profits, damages and costs), attorneys' fees and destruction of infringing materials.
- Preliminary and Permanent Injunction : 15 U.S.C. §1116. Injunctive relief is the preferred remedy in trademark infringement cases. In determining the appropriateness and scope of the injunction, and in balancing the equities of the parties, a court may resolve any doubt in favor of the senior trademark holder.
- Monetary Relief : 15 U.S.C. §1117(a). The court may award plaintiff, subject to the principles of equity, "(1) defendant's profits, (2) damages sustained by the plaintiff and (3) the costs of the action." Harm to the plaintiff, in the form of lost sales and injury to reputation and goodwill is often difficult to prove and quantify. The plaintiff must demonstrate that, but for the defendant's infringing activities, the plaintiff would have made the sales. Also, "in assessing damages the court may enter judgment, according to the circumstances of the case, for any sum above the amount found as actual damages, not exceeding three times such amount." Id . Damages are to function as compensation to the plaintiff, not a penalty to the defendant.
- Attorneys' Fees : 15 U.S.C. §1117. "The court, in exceptional circumstances may award reasonable attorney fees to the prevailing party." "Exceptional" cases usually involve infringement which is malicious, fraudulent, deliberate or willful.
- Enhanced damages for use of counterfeit marks : 15 U.S.C. §1117(b). A counterfeit mark is one which is substantially indistinguishable from a registered mark. "nless the court finds extenuating circumstances," the court shall award the plaintiff treble damages.
[*]Destruction of infringing articles : 15 U.S.C. §1118. "[T]he court may order that all [infringing] labels, signs, prints, packages, wrappers, receptacles and advertisements in the possession of the defendant . . . be delivered up and destroyed."
All this said, Jon was correct that the largest figure in damages if the defendants are found guilty will probably be the attorneys fees on either side.
yep, readint it better, youre right. But it seems that it affects members of the ICPEN org:
Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Canada, Chile, China, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Rep. of Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States, European Union and OECD.
Pretty much everyone
Ah, the notable absence of Panama...
I also recall seeing "treble damages" somewhere, which means, if won, you take whatever damage "baseline" has been awarded and multiply times 3.
Does 1-500 are defendants they wish to add later that they learn about during discovery, or from the subpoenas to private whois
Davis and Gilbert is our firm and having had them represent me in various cases, i would guess that of the list there are 2-5 they really want to get, the rest were added for sensationalism and media attention. O had to put her foot down in a big way.
Davis and Gilbert is our firm and having had them represent me in various cases, i would guess that of the list there are 2-5 they really want to get, the rest were added for sensationalism and media attention. O had to put her foot down in a big way.
Well, actually there is a potential good outcome from this thread. If anyone was running websites such as these they should be closing sites and getting rid of the evidence. Its not much use to the already named but there are still 500 unidentified persons who should be dropping that shit right now.
Even without hosted content they are going after domains containing their names (trademarks) for "domain cyber squatting." Then again, you're in a much bigger pool with domain only so you might be fine.
How concerned are people with berry sites that have no trademarked names in the domain and no photos/etc of these trademarks or anything beyond a youtube embed of a clip featuring acai on them, and never ran any ads with mention of a celeb/trademarked name?
Equally? Much less?
Equally? Much less?
Well, since the clip is from the Oprah show it's Oprah's property and one clearly-stated part of the suit is "Unauthorized Use Of Harpo's Copyrighted Works," then ya, I'd say those individuals are in trouble.
If the youtube clip shows Oprah/Dr. Oz then your chances are as good as anybody else who used their trademark/photos.
It all boils down to Oprah's/Dr. Oz's rep: if it doesn't mention her, it's all good.
Although, you may need to worry about your state's AG or the FTC in the future given the OTHER suit that just went down.
^^ conflicting answers ... I guess just sleep in fear and wait to see if you get served.
My justification is that if your not using oprah/oz names in the content of your site, they're going to have a more difficult time finding your site programmatically since your not doing PPC advertising. A simple query for 'oz oprah resveratrol' returns 591,000 results at the moment ... of which they have the ability to scrape the top 1000.
Furthermore, and this goes back go my middleman post, google would likely fight as much as possible to keep their data private as it would set a nasty precedent that would likely force them to share more info than they want in the future. In order to find out where the videos were embedded, harpo legal would have to get that from google unless you showed up under the "most referred" section of that particular video ... even then, that's a lot of work for them to do seeing there are 10's of 1000's of oprah/oz videos on youtube.
The data/volume numbers will have to come from somewhere though, I just doubt it will be google via adwords/youtube.
My justification is that if your not using oprah/oz names in the content of your site, they're going to have a more difficult time finding your site programmatically since your not doing PPC advertising. A simple query for 'oz oprah resveratrol' returns 591,000 results at the moment ... of which they have the ability to scrape the top 1000.
Furthermore, and this goes back go my middleman post, google would likely fight as much as possible to keep their data private as it would set a nasty precedent that would likely force them to share more info than they want in the future. In order to find out where the videos were embedded, harpo legal would have to get that from google unless you showed up under the "most referred" section of that particular video ... even then, that's a lot of work for them to do seeing there are 10's of 1000's of oprah/oz videos on youtube.
The data/volume numbers will have to come from somewhere though, I just doubt it will be google via adwords/youtube.
You Absoloutely Sure About This?
I'm one of the people who isn't on the list yet, but waiting to see if I'm one of the 'ABC 1-500" This claim makes sense, but can it be 100% confirmed.
I'd like to resume my campaigns, they are and have been 100% FTC and Harpo compliant, but do I start before I know for sure if i'm on that list or not?
Looking forward to replies...
I'm one of the people who isn't on the list yet, but waiting to see if I'm one of the 'ABC 1-500" This claim makes sense, but can it be 100% confirmed.
I'd like to resume my campaigns, they are and have been 100% FTC and Harpo compliant, but do I start before I know for sure if i'm on that list or not?
Looking forward to replies...
I wonder if she's going to differentiate based on the amount of traffic that was driven to the site, if at all.
Hypothetically, let's say someone were to have created a review site back in February of this year, drove about 300 clicks to it spread over 2 weeks, generated 6 leads, and then stopped and let it sit. This site did not appear in the serps, and the only use of a Harpo property was a sub-100x100px logo in the header next to the bolded words "Featured On:"
If she decides to go after the smallest of sites like that, the woman's grabbing for attention.