Aquazzura's Legal Battle With Ivanka Trump Is Over

Footwear News

November 17, 2017

By Katie Abel

 

Aquazzura has agreed to end its trademark infringement lawsuit against first daughter Ivanka Trump.

 

The luxury label filed the suit in June 2016 against Trump, her company IT Collection LLC and its footwear licensee Marc Fisher Holdings LLC, alleging that Trump's Hettie shoe was "virtually identical" to Aquazzura's Wild Thing design.

 

According to Bloomberg, which cited court papers filed on Friday, the case was dismissed after Aquazzura, Trump and other parties, including Marc Fisher, agreed to withdraw the case. No terms were disclosed. The parties were scheduled to go to court in March 2018.

 

U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest said in June that Trump had to testify in the dispute.

 

The legal team that represents Trump, who now serves as the special advisor to President Donald Trump, previously argued that she should not have to submit to a deposition in the lawsuit because "she was not involved in the design, promotion or sale of the shoe.

 

However, Aquazzura's legal team argued that her testimony was necessary given her past public statements about heading brand Ivanka's operations and approving designs.

 

Among the comments Trump made, Aquazzura cited her statement from this 2012 FN story: "There's not a shoe I'm not intimately involved in designing."

 

Trump formally stepped away from her company earlier this year to focus on her role in the White House.

  

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ITC Keeps Clog Import Ban Despite Crocs' Loss At USPTO

Law360

October 27, 2017

By Kyle Jahner (editing by Breda Lund)

 

The U.S. International Trade Commission has retained its ban on the import of Crocs competitors despite a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office invalidation of the shoe company's patent, again deciding such a ruling cannot undo an exclusion order until appeals are exhausted.

 

Despite arguments to the contrary from Crocs competitor U.S.A. Dawgs Inc. and its distributor Double Diamond Distribution Ltd., the ITC said the case did not fundamentally differ from one with similar circumstances between Arista Networks and Cisco Systems. In that case the Federal Circuit has upheld an ITC decision to not stay its bar on infringing Arista products despite Arista's win invalidating the underlying patent at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board.

 

"The commission finds that the circumstances here are no different from Certain Network Devices, Related Software and Components (II), where the commission determined that it would not disturb any issued remedial order, i.e., modify, suspend, or rescind the order, based solely on a final rejection from the PTO," the Oct. 20 order from ITC Secretary Lisa R. Barton said.

 

Competitors of Crocs have accused it of trying to maintain a monopoly on clog-shaped colorful shoes made from ethyl vinyl acetate that it has sold since 2002. Crocs sued competitors and eventually secured an ITC exclusion order in 2011 over patents it secured in 2006, though competitors say Crocs merely added a strap to footwear technology and styles that long predate the company.

 

An inter partes reexamination initiated in 2012, just before the America Invents Act went into effect, invalidated a key Crocs patent in a 2013 ruling finalized by a USPTO examiner in 2016. Crocs is appealing the examiner's decision to the PTAB, but even if the board upholds the decision, Dawgs remains in the same position in the process as Arista, which failed to sway the ITC in July and Federal Circuit in September that a PTAB ruling invalidating the underlying patent justified halting an exclusion order.

 

The decision further cemented the apparent ITC view that a patent invalidation by the USPTO, an executive body, needs to become final in the courts before an exclusion order can be revisited.

 

Dawgs argued to the ITC that its case was different from Arista's since Cisco was moving to quickly appeal to the Federal Circuit following its loss in inter partes review, a more streamlined process since it was initiated post-AIA. Crocs, on the other hand, "has promised to delay the appeal process as long as it can, and has already started lengthening it as much as it can," Dawgs' brief said.

 

Also, Dawgs argued Crocs has benefited from the order for more than six years, whereas the May remedial order in the Cisco-Arista case would have never been effective had Arista prevailed. The ITC order did not address Dawgs' particular arguments in detail, and simply said the circumstances did not differ.

 

Dawgs lawyer David J. Kaplan said that despite the differences, the ruling was not unexpected; he said the company would appeal that ruling among other litigation efforts in its fight against Crocs.

 

"We're not too surprised ours went the same way [as the Arista ruling], but we don't necessarily think the ITC is correct," Kaplan told Law360.

 

Kaplan said he thought that if Dawgs gets a ruling in one of multiple cases, it could change the ITC's stance that nothing changed. He said Dawgs will appeal the Oct. 20 ITC ruling upholding the ban to the Federal Circuit, and will also work to cement the USPTO examiner's decision in the PTAB and, if successful, presumably before the Federal Circuit.

 

A Colorado federal judge last month declined to dismiss Dawgs' Lanham Act false claims lawsuit against 18 individual current and former Crocs' leaders, which is now consolidated with a 2016 lawsuit against the company. In both cases, the judge did toss antitrust claims that alleged Crocs used sham patent prosecution and litigation to create a monopoly, finding the pre-2012 legal success of those efforts undercut allegations that they were bogus.

 

Counsel for Crocs did not respond to a request for comment.