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Online Retailer Accused of Using Bedding Corporation’s Trademarks to Promote and Sell “Inferior” Products
The Comphy Co. (“Plaintiff”), a California corporation selling luxury bedding products, filed a complaint against Amazon.com, Inc. (“Defendant”) in the Northern District of Illinois alleging trademark infringement, contributory trademark infringement, and false designation of origin under federal law. The complaint also alleges violation of Illinois Uniform Deceptive Trade Practices Act and Consumer Fraud under Illinois law.
The claims primarily involve (1) the Plaintiff’s “COMPHY,” stylized “C,” “COMPHY COMPANY,” and “COMPHY SHEETS” trademarks and (2) Plaintiff’s insistance that it has no interest and has expressly refused to sell its products on Defendant’s website, amazon.com. According to the complaint, the Defendant is making unauthorized and infringing use of Plaintiff’s trademarks by using the trademarks to promote bedding and related products not made or authorized by the Plaintiff on Defendant’s website. In particular, the Plaintiff states that the Defendant is posting results for “inferior” third-party sheets when consumers search for terms including Plaintiff’s trademarks on Defendant’s website. Moreover, the Defendant pays third-party search engines to direct consumers to Defendant’s website when searching for “COMPHY” brand sheets. Such actions are said to drive sales to competing products and are likely to cause and have caused actual confusion.
The Plaintiff asks the court for an injunction as well as a variety of monetary damages, fees, and costs.
The case can be followed at The Comphy Co., v. Amazon.com, Inc., 18-cv-04584 (N.D. Ill.).
U.S. Supreme Court grants writ of certiorari in Helsinn Healthcare S.A., Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Inc.
Last month, the United States Supreme Court granted a petition for a writ of certiorari in Helsinn Healthcare S.A., Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Inc. In 2017, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held that a publicly disclosed commercial sale amounts to an invalidating act, even when the details of the invention are not publicly disclosed.
The United States Supreme Court will decide whether under the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, an inventor’s sale of an invention to a third party that is obligated to keep the invention confidential qualifies as prior art for purposes of determining the patentability of the invention.
The outcome will be interesting, as sometime in 2019 the Supreme Court should provide some guidance on the scope of the on-sale bar (i.e., those acts and/or disclosures that occur prior to the filing date of a patent application, which could affect the validity of a patent). A different issue, which will not be in front of the U.S. Supreme Court for review, at least for a while, is whether a secret commercial sale amounts to an invalidating act.